n a large tub or kettle. If the lye was not
strong enough, it was poured over fresh ashes. An old-time receipt
says:--

"The great Difficulty in making Soap come is the want of Judgment
of the Strength of the Lye. If your Lye will bear up an Egg or a
Potato so you can see a piece of the Surface as big as a Ninepence
it is just strong enough."

The grease and lye were then boiled together in a great pot over a fire
out of doors. It took about six bushels of ashes and twenty-four pounds
of grease to make a barrel of soap. The soft soap made by this process
seemed like a clean jelly, and showed no trace of the repulsive grease
that helped to form it. A hard soap also was made with the tallow of the
bayberry, and was deemed especially desirable for toilet use. But little
hard soap was purchased, even in city homes.

It was a common saying: "We had bad luck with our soap," or good luck.
The soap was always carefully stirred one way. The "Pennsylvania Dutch"
used a sassafras stick to stir it. A good smart worker could make a
barrel of soap in a day, and have time to sit and rest in the afternoon
and talk her luck over, before getting supper.

This soft soap was used in the great monthly washings which, for a
century after the settlement of the colonies, seem to have been the
custom. The household wash was allowed to accumulate, and the washing
done once a month, or in some households once in three months.

Thomas Tusser's rhymed instructions to good housekeepers as to the
washing contain chiefly warnings to the housekeeper against thieves,
thus:--

"Dry sun, dry wind,
Safe bind, safe find.
Go wash well, saith summer, with sun I shall dry;
Go wring well, saith winter, with wind so shall I.
To trust without heed is to venture a joint,
Give tale and take count is a housewifely point."

Abigail Foote wrote of making a broom of Guinea wheat. This was not
broom-corn, for that useful plant was not grown in Connecticut for the
purpose of broom-making till twenty years or more after she wrote her
diary. Brooms and brushes were made of it in Italy nearly two centuries
ago. Benjamin Franklin, who was ever quick to use and develop anything
that would benefit his native country, and was ever ready to take a
hint, noted a few seeds of broom-corn hanging on an imported brush. He
planted these seeds and raised some of the corn; and Thomas Jefferson
placed broom-corn am