it had much better be saved to mix with the tallow at melting time.
It made the candles much firmer, also bettered their light, and moreover
changed the tallow hue to an agreeable very pale yellow. Bee hives, like
much else, were to a degree primitive--the wax came from comb crushed in
the straining of honey. It was boiled in water to take away the remnant
sweetness, then allowed to cool on top the water, taken off, and
remelted over clean water, so manipulated as to free it from foreign
substances, then molded into cakes. One cake was always set apart for
the neighborhood cobbler, who melted it with tallow and rosin to make
shoemaker's wax. Another moiety was turned into grafting wax--by help of
it one orchard tree bore twelve manners of fruit. And still another, a
small, pretty cake from a scalloped patty pan, found place in the family
work basket--in sewing by hand with flax thread, unless you waxed it, it
lost strength, and quickly pulled to pieces.

We bought our flax thread in skeins, but Mammy loved to tell of spinning
it back in the days when she was young, and the best spinner on the old
plantation. She still spun shoe-thread for her friend the cobbler, who,
however, furnished her the raw flax, which he had grown, rotted and
hechtelled, in his bit of bottom land. There were still spinning and
weaving in plenty at our house--Mother had made, yearly, jeans, linsey,
carpets and so on--but the plantation was not wholly clothed with
homespun, as had been the case in her father's house.

Return we to our candle-making. It was work for the very coldest
weather--even though we had two sets of molds, needs must the candles
harden quickly if the making was to speed well. Molds could be filled at
the kitchen hearth, then set outside to cool. For dipping the tallow-pot
had to be set over an outside fire, and neighbored by a ladder, laid
flat on trestles with smooth boards laid underneath. Mammy spun the
candle wicks--from long-staple cotton, drawing it out thick, and
twisting it barely enough to hold together. It must not be too coarse,
as it had to be doubled over reeds at top, either for molding or
dipping.

The molds were of candle-shape, joined in batteries of six or twelve,
with a pert handle at one side, and tiny holes at the tips, through
which the wick-ends were thrust, by help of a long broom-straw. Well in
place they were drawn taut, the reeds so placed as to hold the wicks
centrally, then tallow melted with be