meats seem to have been most popular with the humbler classes.

Ice was not stored for summer use, fruits were few and not choice, and
the vegetables limited; our ancestors, at that time, having no
acquaintance with the tomato, cauliflower, egg-plant, red-pepper,
okra, and certain other staple vegetables of today. The Indians had
schooled them in the preparation of succotash with the beans grown
among the corn, and they raised melons, squashes, and pumpkins in
abundance.

Corn for bread was broken in a mortar and ground in a grater or
hand-mill. Mills, in the early days, were few and far apart, some of
the back-settlers being compelled to travel many miles for their
grist. This condition gave origin to the adage "first come first
served," and frequently carried the late arrivals over night and, at
times, prolonged the trip to procure a few bushels of meal three or
four days. "Band-mills," run by horses, and small water mills, where
the situation permitted, came into use to supply the demand of larger
ones. The building of a good mill, it must be confessed, was hailed
with greater satisfaction than the erection of a church.

The more primitive of these peoples ate from wooden trenchers and
platters; sat upon three-legged stools or wooden blocks; used bear's
grease in lieu of lard and butter, and cut their foods with the same
sheath-knives used in disembowelling and skinning the deer killed by
their rifles. They had no money and their scant furniture was
essentially crude, sometimes including a few pewter dishes and plates
and spoons, but usually nothing beyond wooden bowls, trenchers, and
noggins, with gourds and squashes daintily cut. The horse trough
served as a wash-basin, and water buckets were seldom seen. The family
owning an iron pot and a kitchen table were esteemed rich and
extravagant, and china and crockery ware were at once practically
unknown and uncraved. Feather-beds and bedsteads were equally
eschewed, these hardy men who had conquered the wilderness not
disdaining, when night came, to sleep upon a dirt floor with a
bear-skin for covering.

With muscles of iron and hearts of oak, they united a tenderness for
the weak and a capability for self-sacrifice worthy of an ideal knight
of chivalry; and their indomitable will, which recognized no obstacle
as insuperable, was equalled only by their rugged integrity which
regarded dishonesty as an offense as contemptible as cowardice. For
many years they dwelt