The kitchen in those days was the chief apartment and the most interesting room in the house. Who would want to go into the stiff, prim "best room" when they could be so much more comfortable in the spacious kitchen where everyone was busy and happy, and where apples could be hung by a string in front of the fire to roast and made to spin cheerily when the string was twisted, that all sides might be equally heated? Any girl or boy to-day would be only too glad of a chance to sit on a log in front of such a fire and watch red apples turn and sputter as the heat broke the apple skin, setting free the luscious juice to trickle down the sides.
As the Indian's first thought was for shelter, and he put up his wigwam, so the early settler's first thought was for shelter, and he built, not a wigwam, but a log-house with a kitchen large enough to serve as a general utility room. It was filled with various things, and all articles in it were used constantly. Everything not brought from the mother country the settlers made by hand. The colonial kitchen you can build may be of gray or white cardboard. Old boxes, if large enough, will answer the purpose.
Fig. [205].—Kitchen floor.
I will tell you exactly how I built the colonial kitchen seen in [Fig. 204]. I made the floor ([Fig. 205]), the two side walls both alike ([Fig. 206]), the back wall ([Fig. 207]), and the interior of the fireplace ([Fig. 208]) of light-gray cardboard. I cut all the heavy lines, scored and then bent all the dotted lines.
Fig. [206].—Side wall.
Fig. [207].—Back wall.