Ter roorches, terroorches
She mameche backle che boo.”
There are other articles of food which have come from the Dutch. The cooky from the Dutch word kockje, the cruller from the Dutch kruller, and noodles for soup from the Dutch noodlegees are well known. Our doughnut called in England in old times donnuts, are the same as the old Dutch oly-coecks, which originally had a raisin embedded in their centre.
In describing the old kitchen, I must not forget the coffee grinder, which hung on the wall, in which our grandmothers knew enough not to grind more than sufficient for a day’s use. Coffee was coffee in those days, and not the mixture of chicory and pease now imposed on those who buy what is called ground coffee. I say to my readers, pay no attention to the advertisers of postum and other substitutes for coffee, who magnify the ill effects of the genuine article. Always buy your coffee in the bean, roast and grind it yourself, and preserve its full flavor in an air tight box until used. I know that in Paris sixty years ago, coffee roasters were to be seen every morning along the sidewalks or in the court yards of the houses, showing the general importance attached to the morning beverage, and that everywhere in hotel and restaurant delicious coffee was always served. In 1895 no such scenes on the sidewalks came under my observation, and poor coffee had become the rule. No doubt the change is due to the use of ground coffee, which has either lost its flavour, or is an adulterated article.
In the autumn in my youth there was a solicitude concerning the articles to be laid in for the winter. First good potatoes must be found, twenty bushels of which with a barrel of sweet German turnips, and a bushel of carrots and onions must be put in brick bins in the cellar, where exposed to as little light as possible, they would in the days before furnaces keep well till spring. Then in a cool part of the cellar, places must be found for five barrels of apples, one each of Rhode Island Greenings, Baldwins, Russets, Holmes apples and sweet apples. Of course a firkin of good butter must be laid in, a jar of tamarinds, a jar of malaga grapes, and fifty pounds of well selected codfish, the last to be broad and thick, and not more than eighteen inches long including the tail. The fish must be kept in a close box, and placed in the garret. Never buy stripped codfish, for if you do you will probably get hake, polluck, skate and catfish, and other cheap denisons of the sea. In speaking of articles of food, in which there have been changes, there are other articles besides coffee and codfish not altogether creditable to those who provide them for public use. The sweet oil that you buy may be lard or cotton seed, the horseradish, which you wish for your veal in the spring, is largely flat turnip; some of the canned tomatoes are green and colored red, and much of your vinegar and whiskey is manufactured. The Philadelphia capons, Rhode Island turkeys and Vermont geese displayed on your hotel menus were raised in Plympton, Carver and Halifax. Our traders are honest, but they sell what they buy without analysis, leaving their protection to the law. Many of these misrepresentations are innocent enough, and cannot be classed with that which daily stares us in the face on the first page of a newspaper which is delivered at the hotels and newstands at half past twelve and dated 4.05. The worst feature of such misrepresentations as this is that it teaches the newsboys to make the false claim after 4.05, that the paper so dated is the last edition. One of the occasional domestic functions of our home was a quilting bee, in which friends and neighbors joined for the purpose of quilting a counterpane or bed quilt, made of patchwork. We had a set of quilting bars, four strips of wood about eight feet long, with holes a few inches apart, which when resting on the tops of chairs, could be put together by means of pegs at the corners, and enlarged as the quilt required more space between the side bars. As there were not many of these bars in town ours were constantly in demand, and loaned from one to another. I suppose these patchwork quilts are still in use, but the last one I ever saw was given to me by Mrs. Taylor, a daughter of Uncle Branch Pierce, in acknowledgment of service rendered her in securing the return of the body of her son, David A. Taylor, who was killed during the civil war. A part of my occupation at school in early boyhood was sewing patchwork squares together, to be used in quilts when needed.
Invariably on Saturday night my brother and I were given the weekly bath, which was not especially welcome in winter, but as cleanliness was next to Godliness, it was esteemed a proper preparation for Sunday. A countryman visiting New York for the first time must have been accustomed to the same habit, for he wrote home to his wife that “agin my room in the hotel is another room, with a bath tub and hot and cold water, and a lot of towels, and when I see them things I almost wished, begosh, that it was Saturday night.” Notwithstanding the bath tub preparation for the Sabbath, I am sorry to say that the hours of that day were those of my youth which I recall with the least pleasure. A strict observance of the Sabbath was the custom of the time, and the day was devoted until late in the afternoon to Scripture reading and Sunday-school lessons in the morning, and attendance twice at church, with Sunday-school at noon. Parents in those days did not permit their children to loiter at home and on the street until the morning service was finished, and then send them to Sunday-school, for they believed that the religious and moral instruction received from the pulpit was as important as that received through catechisms from teachers in the pew.
After the second service my brother and I were sometimes permitted to take hold of hands and make a call at the house of my uncle Mr. Nathaniel Morton Davis, or at the house of my great aunt, Hannah White, then ninety years of age, a descendant of Peregrine White, who had talked with those who well knew the first born son of New England. Occasionally, also, I went with my mother to visit Miss Molly Jackson, an aunt of my grandmother Davis, who at the age of nearly one hundred occupied a second story room in the southwest corner of the house in Hobbs Hole, next south of that of Thos. E. Cornish. My visits to her connected me with an earlier date than any other incidents in my life, giving me an opportunity to see and talk with a person born one hundred and seventy-six years ago, or only twenty-five years after the death of Peregrine White. The lax observance of the Sabbath now prevailing in marked contrast with its observance in earlier times, believing as I do in the beneficent and conservative influence of stated days of rest for man and beast, aside from all religious considerations, should be considerately and wisely reformed.
CHAPTER XXXXVI.
Besides the quilting bee which has been mentioned, there were formerly many other kinds of bees, some within my own time, and others that I have heard about from my elders. There were the chopping and stone bees, by which a new comer in a settlement was assisted by all his neighbors in clearing the land for his house and farm; the apple gathering bee and the woodpile bee, in which under the full moon the fiddle and the dance played an important part. There was also the raising bee, when a house completely framed was ready to be set up, in which all the carpenters joined and found under the stimulating influence of Medford rum that in lifting plates and studs and rafters their yoke was easy, and their burden light. In raising the house on the upper westerly corner of High and Spring streets in 1799, the frame fell, precipitating from thirty to forty carpenters to the ground, twenty-one of whom were seriously, though none fatally injured. In that case the rum proved to be a little above proof, and the treenail fastenings a little below. The last house in Plymouth raised with the Medford accompaniment, was that now standing on the southerly corner of Howland street, built in 1834. The great bee, which was celebrated all over the corn growing parts of our country in olden times, was the husking bee, not the sham frolic of present days when, like the fox bought in a bag by Newport hunters, a load of corn on the stalk is bought for the occasion and piled on a floor glistening under electric lights, but the genuine husking frolic in a barn of ample proportions, where piles of pumpkins furnished the decorations, and cornstalk fiddles enlivened the scene. There the lads and lassies sat around the diminishing heap, and all knew the dangers and delights which attended the finding of a red or a smutty ear of corn.
“In the barn the youths and maidens