tunate that the ordinary processes of
book-illustration give too scant suggestion of the variety, beauty, and
delicacy of their decoration, to permit the reproduction of some of
these powder-horns in these pages.

These habits of employing the spare moments of farm-life in the
manufacture from wood of farm implements and various aids to domestic
comfort, were not peculiar to New England farmers, nor invented by them.
The old English farmer-author, Thomas Tusser, in his rhymed book, _Five
Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_, written in the sixteenth century
(which Southey declared to be one of the most curious and formerly one
of the most popular books in our language), was careful to give
instructions in his "remembrances" and "doings" as to similar industries
on the English farm and manor house. He says:--

"Yokes, forks, and such other let bailie spy out
And gather the same as he walketh about;
And after, at leisure, let this be his hire,
To beath them and trim them at home by the fire."

_To beath_ is to heat unseasoned wood to harden and straighten it.

"If hop-yard or orchard ye mean for to have,
For hop-poles and crotches in lopping go save.

"Save elm, ash, and crab tree for cart and for plow,
Save step for a stile of the crotch of a bough;
Save hazel for forks, save sallow for rake:
Save hulver and thorn, thereof flail for to make."

The Massachusetts Bay settlers came chiefly from the vicinity, many from
the same county, where Tusser lived and farmed, and where his points of
good husbandry were household words; so they had in their English homes
as had their grandfathers before them, the knowledge and habit of saving
and utilizing the various woods on the farm, and of occupying every
spare minute with the useful jack-knife. The varied and bountiful trees
of the New World stimulated and emphasized the whittling habit until it
became universally accepted as a distinguishing New England
characteristic, a Yankee trait.

This constant employment of every moment of the waking hours contributed
to impart to New Englanders a regard and method of life which is spoken
of by many outsiders with contempt, namely, a closely girded and
invariable habit of economy. Children brought up in this way knew the
value of everything in the household, knew the time it took to produce
it, for they had labored themselves, and they grew to take care of small
things, not to squander and waste