had far longer handles than are seen on any
cooking-utensils in these days of stoves and ranges, where the flames
are covered and the housewife shielded. Gridirons had long handles of
wood or iron, which could be fastened to the shorter stationary handles.
The two gridirons in the accompanying illustration are a century old.
The circular one was the oldest form. The oblong ones, with groove to
collect the gravy, did not vary in shape till our own day. Both have
indications of fittings for long handles, but the handles have vanished.
A long-handled frying-pan is seen hanging by the side of the
slave-kitchen fireplace.

An accompaniment of the kitchen fireplace, found, not in farmhouses, but
among luxury-loving town-folk, was the plate-warmer. They are seldom
named in inventories, and I know of but one of Revolutionary days, and
it is here shown. Similar ones are manufactured to-day; the legs,
perhaps, are shorter, but the general outline is the same.

An important furnishing of every fireplace was the andirons. In kitchen
fireplaces these were usually of iron, and the shape known as goose-neck
were common. Cob irons were the simplest form, and merely supported the
spit; sometimes they had hooks to hold a dripping-pan. A common name for
the kitchen andirons was fire-dogs; and creepers were low, small
andirons, usually used with the tall fire-dogs. The kitchen andirons
were simply for use to help hold the logs and cooking-utensils. But
other fireplaces had handsome fire-dogs of copper, brass, or cut steel,
cast or wrought in handsome devices. These were a pride and delight to
the housewife.

A primitive method of roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was by
suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a
peg in the ceiling, while some one--usually an unwilling
child--occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole
turnspit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave
the string a good twist, and thereafter it would untwist, and then twist
a little again, and so on until the vibration ceased, when she again
basted and started it. As the juices sometimes ran down in the roast and
left the upper part too dry, a "double string-roaster" was invented, by
which the equilibrium of the joint could be shifted. A jack was a
convenient and magnified edition of the primitive string, being a metal
suspensory machine. A still further glorification was the addition of a
revolving power whi