ferred by the sulphur splint; for fifty years ago
matches were neither cheap nor common.

Though various processes for lighting in which sulphur was used in a
match shape, were brought before the public at the beginning of this
century, they were complicated, expensive, and rarely seen. The first
practical friction matches were "Congreves," made in England in 1827.
They were thin strips of wood or cardboard coated with sulphur and
tipped with a mixture of mucilage, chlorate of potash, and sulphide of
antimony. Eighty-four of them were sold in a box for twenty-five cents,
with a piece of "glass-paper" through which the match could be drawn.
There has been a long step this last fifty years between the tinder-box
used so patiently for two centuries, and the John Jex Long match-making
machine of our times, which turns out seventeen million matches a day.

CHAPTER III

THE KITCHEN FIRESIDE

The kitchen in all the farmhouses of all the colonies was the most
cheerful, homelike, and picturesque room in the house; indeed, it was in
town houses as well. The walls were often bare, the rafters dingy; the
windows were small, the furniture meagre; but the kitchen had a warm,
glowing heart that spread light and welcome, and made the poor room a
home. In the houses of the first settlers the chimneys and fireplaces
were vast in size, sometimes so big that the fore-logs and back-logs for
the fire had to be dragged in by a horse and a long chain; or a
hand-sled was kept for the purpose. Often there were seats within the
chimney on either side. At night children could sit on these seats and
there watch the sparks fly upward and join the stars which could plainly
be seen up the great chimney-throat.

But as the forests disappeared under the waste of burning for tar, for
potash, and through wanton clearing, the fireplaces shrank in size; and
Benjamin Franklin, even in his day, could write of "the fireplaces of
our fathers."

The inflammable catted chimney of logs and clay, hurriedly and readily
built by the first settlers, soon gave place in all houses to vast
chimneys of stone, built with projecting inner ledges, on which rested a
bar about six or seven or even eight feet from the floor, called a
lug-pole (lug meaning to carry) or a back-bar; this was made of green
wood, and thus charred slowly--but it charred surely in the generous
flames of the great chimney heart. Many annoying, and some fatal
accidents came from the colla