" Not in former times, as now, were the families in country villages or districts dependent on the butcher's stalls for the daily supply of their table, nor yet \ipon the baker's shops and the flour mercliunts for bread and pastry. These staples of life, iis well as their wearing apjiarel, were furnislied upon their own premises. Their < ereals were gathered from their fields, threshed and winuowed upon their own barn-floors, and carried to the mill in bags to be converted in Hour, which was kneaded and bilked by the good matrons, in the old fashioned brick ovens, constructed in the immense kitchen chimney-backs. And as to pastry, all of it, not even excepting wedding-cake, was prepared in the same way. Their herds of kiue and flocks of sheep, grazing upon their pasture fields, and the poultry in their barn-yards supplied them with fresh meat, butter and eggs the whole year round. The writer himself, although not as old as some men whom he knows, can well remember the time when a single small cow or a young steer, slaughtered once a week, sufficed to supply the families of New Rochelle and East Chester with all the fresh meat that was needed, over and above that raised on their own premises. Thus a thrifty farmer, in the early summer or spring, would slaughter a calf, sheep or lamb and, reserving what was required for his own use, send the rest to his neighbors,mntil they in turn did the same thing ; and thus the supply was mutual and alternate. This policy was frequently adopted also upon tlie occurrence of a stone, or ploughing ' frolic,' as they were called, or upon the raising of a barn or some other heavy-timbered building, on which occasions a supply of goodfold Jamaica rum acted as a sort of steam power, and at night the affair was often concluded by a liberal supply of lamb or veal pot -pie and generous potations of old cider.