Book Description

"Like most New England houses built seventy-five years ago, the farmhouse at the old Squire's had been planned without thought of bathing facilities. The family washtub, brought to the kitchen of a Saturday night, and filled with well water tempered slightly by a few quarts from the teakettle, served the purpose. We were not so badly off as our ancestors had been, however, for in 1865, when we young folks went home to live at the old Squire's, stoves were fully in vogue and farmhouses were comfortably warmed. Bathing on winter nights was uncomfortable enough, we thought, but it was not the desperately chilly business that it must have been when farmhouses were heated by a single fireplace."