AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
rag carpet. I often helped at each stage of the process. Quilting parties had not yet gone out of vogue. The quilt was stretched on a frame, the design marked out with chalk, and then the women gathered around. Stockings and mittens were still knit of woolen yarn with long steel needles. I learned to knit. Coal came to the house in huge lumps which were broken to a suitable size with an axe or sledge. From the stove in the sitting-room a pipe ran up through the large room above and furnished the only heat. We made and used tallow candles and later used lard oil, whale oil and burning fluid.
The fare was simple and substantial. We had breakfast at seven, dinner at twelve, and supper at six. It was not usual to put fruit on the table. I never saw a banana in my childhood, and when, long afterward, I ate one for the first time, did not like it. Oranges were reserved for Christmas and festal occasions. There was nothing to drink but water, milk, tea, and coffee. The last was not good for children and was kept from them. White sugar came in the shape of a tall cone, called a loaf, and was broken into lumps with a knife and flat iron. Coffee was bought raw and roasted over the kitchen fire. Behind the same fire we were washed and soaped every Saturday night. Mush and milk was a customary dish and made me very tired. Two hogs were killed in the winter and we had fried mush, fried scrapple, fried sausage, fried ham, fried eggs and fried potatoes—not French fried or by any other namby-pamby modern method, but fried with fat—and I am fond of them all today. The abomination called baker's bread was unknown. We had roast turkey for Christmas and New Year's Day, and once in a while a roast pig. We were taught to say “Sir” and “Ma'am” to elderly people and to be silent in their presence. On Sunday afternoons we went to Sunday-school, and for five verses of Scripture committed to memory received a blue ticket; for five blue tickets a red ticket, and for a hundred red tickets a Bible, but no confectionery.
