eating directly from the bountiful dish with a spoon that
came and went from dish to mouth without reproach, or thought of
ill-manners. The accounts of travellers in all the colonies frequently
tell of such repasts; some termed it eating in the fashion of the Dutch.
The reports of old settlers often recall the general dish; and some very
distinguished persons joined in the circle around it, and were glad to
get it. Variety was of little account, compared to quantity and quality.
A cheerful hospitality and grateful hearts filled the hollow place of
formality and elegance.

By the time that newspapers began to have advertisements in them--about
1750--we find many more articles for use at the table; but often the
names were different from those used to-day. Our sugar bowls were called
sugar boxes and sugar pots; milk pitchers were milk jugs, milk ewers,
and milk pots. Vegetable dishes were called basins, pudding dishes
twifflers, small cups were called sneak cups.

We have still to-day a custom much like one of olden times, when we have
the crumbs removed from our tables after a course at dinner. Then a
voider was passed around the table near the close of the dinner, and
into it the persons at the table placed their trenchers, napkins, and
the crumbs from the table. The voider was a deep wicker, wooden, or
metal basket. In the _Boke of Nurture_, written in 1577, are these
lines:--

"When meate is taken quyte awaye
And Voyders in presence,
Put you your trenchour in the same
and all your resydence.
Take you with your napkin & knyfe
the croms that are fore the,
In the Voyder your Napkin leave
for it is a curtesye."

CHAPTER V

FOOD FROM FOREST AND SEA

Though all the early explorers and travellers came to America eager to
find precious and useful metals, they did not discover wealth and
prosperity underground in mines, but on the top of the earth, in the
woods and fields. To the forests they turned for food, and they did not
turn in vain. Deer were plentiful everywhere, and venison was offered by
the Indians to the first who landed from the ships. Some families lived
wholly on venison for nine months of the year. In Virginia were vast
numbers of red and fallow deer, the latter like those of England, except
in the smaller number of branches of the antlers. They were so devoid of
fear as to remain undisturbed by the approach of men; a writer of that
day says: "Hard by