Dipping the Candles

It is my task to hang six or eight of the milk-weed wicks on the rod, taking good care that they shall be straight, which is not easy to accomplish, for silvery and soft though the down is when first gathered, it twists harshly, and of course, as everyone knows, there can be no bends or kinks in a properly made candle.

Mother dips perhaps eight of these wicks at a time into a pot of bayberry wax, and after they have been so treated six or eight times, they are of sufficient size, for our vegetable tallow sticks in greater mass than does that which comes from an animal.

A famous candle-maker is my mother, and I have known her to make as many as one hundred and fifty in a single day.

The candle box which your uncle gave us is of great convenience, for since it has on the inside a hollow for each candle, there is little danger that any will be broken, and, besides, we may put therein the half-burned candles, for we cannot afford to waste even the tiniest scraps of tallow.

Captain Standish has in his home candles made from bear's grease, and as wicks, dry marsh grass braided.

When the second winter had begun, and the snow lay deep all around, save where our people had dug streets and paths, Sarah and I were forced, as a matter of course, to remain a goodly portion of the time within our homes. Those of the men who were not needed to hew huge trees into lengths convenient for burning, were hunting and setting traps, in the hope of adding to the store of provisions which was so scanty after it had been divided among those who came in the Fortune, and Sarah and I had little else to do than recall to mind that which had happened during the summer, when all the country was good to look upon instead of being imprisoned by the frost.