The Newtown bee., 1889-11-15
Progress in Home and Farm Comforts.

We live in anage of inventive progress. So rapsi is this progress that persons liv- ing span the period including the finder box and the electric light; the saddle bags and the stage coach and the light ming express rushing over steel rails at the rate of mile minute; p cents and 2-cent postage; the open fire place and the coal furnace heating the whole house. We have supped on wonders, so to speak and, even as electricity is now supplant- ing gas and steam, we are prepared to accept any discoveries and inventions without surprise. Y
 Stepping into the museum of ex-Town Clerk Peck, where Mr Peck is always ready to receive visitors and show and explain his interesting collection, the actual steps of this progress are brought wildly before the eye. Take the matter of light, to which reference has been made. Less than 200 years ago, New towns first settlers had little light in the evening but the huge fireplace and pine torches. Then came d spoon-shap- ed iron, about twice as large as a table spoon, with an upright at the back by which to hang it to the wall or other support. This iron was filled with grease and a strip of cloth laid in it as d wick. This was little more than metal copy of the lamps used by the wise and fool ish virgins of the Christian parable. So little progress in 16 centuries, but how rapid the stride of the last two! Pattern ed something after the iron grease light was tin. with short circle rising il lit- tie way from the foot for holding a can dle and flat wide tin back pierced with a hole by which to hang it up by. This was naturally followed by the iron can dlestick familiar to all acquainted with the furniture of the earlier part of the century or the more elaborate candlestick with it's tray, extinguisher and snutfers. | Whale oil or burning fluid lamps of glass filled in the interval between the tallow candle and the kerosene, which seems soon destined to pale before gas and elec- tricity.
 Starting d fire or striking q light was once so much of q chore that, once the fire was out, a boy had to be sent to neighbor's for live embers from his fire place. Mir Peck has horn tinder pouch with it's steel, that belonged to Albert Sanford's grandfather and was given to Mir Peck by Mir Sanford. This horn was filled with scorched linen on which sparks fell struck by d flint from the steel held over it. Mrs Peck herself, though born after the present century was quarter | gone, remembers how her father, Herman Fairchid, used finder box which is pre- served in the museum to strike a light by which to touch off the birthstone matches l first used. For the first matches did not ignite by striking them; they had to be set off by spark or flame. Those brin- stone matches were home made sticks dipped in the birthstone sulphur then bought by the roll and an indispensable equipment of every home blessed with children, and children were fashionable then. So were the itch and lice that every child caught at school in those days. How the wise heads crooked, as MT Peck remembers, when lucifer match es arrived.
 The wide fireplace, with it's iron crane within and roomy oven at the side, first gave place to the saddle bags stove, t stove with griddle on each side of the pipe and one beneath it. The oven was a small affair between the griddles. large enough to hold d single loaf of bread, re- quiring the pots and kettles to have a bottom about foot deep that they might reach below the oven to the fire. The rotary stove was the next fashion, d stove with a movable top and q crank at the side with which to turn it around and bring any part of it to the front. Mr and Mrs Peck began housekeeping with a Green Mountain rotary. The warming pan ill which coals were placed for warming bed for an invalid or on d cold night and the foot stove, inside which coals were placed for warming the feet : at church, before the churches were heat : ed, belong to this era Mir Peck has q warming pan given him by Abigail Fair child, whose grandfather, Capt Silas Fairchild, brought it from Fairfield on horseback before the Revolutionary war. An ancient buffet, also from Albert San ford's, the corner cupboard where the choice China of the family then rare and highly priZed, was kept, adorns one cor ner of Mir Peek's museum and is filled with the pewter platters, porringers, mo- lasses cups and more brittle table ware of the fathers.
 Many a passer-by must have noticed the wooden blow in front of the door , The wood work of this blow was built by Lewis Mallett of Tashua 60 years age and the iron work was made by Jeremiah Hubbell of Stepney, the same year. Ii , was built for Elisha Beardsley, who died in 1874 and his son, Agur Beardsley, own ed it until it was added to Mr Peck's col lection. The early blow, like all farm tools then, was home made, the carpen ter building the blow, which was ther furnished with a steel point, Il miniature of the present mouldboard. Mir Peel has prepared this statement to go witt one of these points that he possesses I ssThe undersigned believes that he has , ill his possession the model of the famous Bull.plow, so named after one Thomas
 Bull, the originator of the model, whicf l was supposed to be lost or stolen iron 2 him during his march across the coun
 try to the defense of New London during the war of 1872 and ploughed up on tho ' farm of John k. Smith in 1860, whicl . field had not been pioughed since tit