New-York tribune., 1905-08-13
WAITING FOR DINNER
RELICS OF OLDEN DAYS.
Many Are To Be Found an Attics of
Nep-EngIand FarmhOuses.

One has only to visit the oldtime attics of
New-England farmhouses to receive ocular proof
OF the fact that 1.-The world do move" along the
line Of labor saving inventions and of articles of
general utility. One here gets proof of the fact
that customs change, and if proof were needed
Of the fact that Dame Fashion is tickle creature
such proof could here be found in abundance. II
one would bark back to the past and find ones
self in atmosphere reminiscent of days of
long ago, one should visit old New-England
attic in which the family heirlooms have been
preserved throughout many generations. There
are many such attics still uninvaded by the
eager searcher for genuine four poster bed
steads and "highboys'' that bear the sure mark
of real antiquity. There are attics in which
these searchers would go wild" but not even
this degree of eager enthusiasm and of longing
could induce the owners of these ancient relics
to part with a single one of them. Endeared
and sacred by lifelong associations and by the
touch of vanished hands, some of these relics
are not TO be purchased with any amount Of
money eager buyers may offer for them
What! Sell my own great-grandmOthers
four poster bedstead that was a part Of her
wedding setting out and that she slept on sixty
years and that she died on? Why, my grand
mother and my mother were both born on that
bedstead, and so was L Sell It? Well, I guess
I'll be good deal poorer than be at the pres
ent time before I sell it That bedstead come TO
by viii, and it's going to my daughter by
will along with great-grandmother's silver
spoons"
There are IN the old attics of New-England
many articles cf furniture that have been men
toned in more than one will 1t not un-
common in the oIden days to mention every
article of furniture, every household utensil,
70 IN TaiS will
1t was the custom to give in such full detail a
list of ones possessions that not even a shoe
buckle or a candIestick was overlooked.
THAT warming pan has been In our family
nearly two hundred years." said an old woman,
showing the writer some of her attic treasures.
1T was the custom, you know, TO fill the pan
with hot Goals and pass it between the sheets
of the bed cold winter nights. And this little
old foot stove came to me from my grandmother.
She carried ii to church hundreds of times, and
sat with her feet on it during those long. long
sermons in the unheated churches they had in
those days And you know it was the custom
for the minister to preach all the way from two
to three hours. and nowadays people begin to
yawn and they make complaint If the preacher
holds forth longer than thirty minutes. even In
the beautiful and luxuriously comfortable
churches we have in this day. Think Of what
il used to be when folks rode eight ten miles
to church IN the biting cold and then had to sit
in church like a refrigerator without a sign OF
a stove In it guess these little foot stoves
came in very handy in those days"
One is sure to find in the old attic the spinning
wheel without which young woman felt that
she could begin her married life in the days of
long ago. Her evenings were spent before II
and her spinning her pick up" work
throughout the entire day. The old loom,
clumsy and with tremendous possibilities as
producer of backache bears silent testimony to
the days when nearly every housewife wove the
cloth for the garments of the entire family. She
wove her own sheets and bedspreads, or "kiver-
lids" as they were sometimes called. If she had
a carpet at all it was made of the strips OF rags
she had cut and sewn together with patient
care and then woven into carpet with her own
hands Rag carpets are still woven In some
rural homes, but the linen sheets and the blue
and white or blue and red bedspreads woven
no moro
The old churn, an object of loathlng to the