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Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

Who is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Which of these four poems do you like the best? Give reasons. Which poem is the easiest to read? Which is the hardest?

2. Read lines which show why the harvest is a time of rejoicing. Which best describes the harvest?

3. Why is Thanksgiving Day celebrated in the autumn? Tell the story of the first Thanksgiving Day.

4. Mention the chief difference in thought between "The Harvest" and "Thanksgiving."

5. Explain how the harvest is "nature's boldest triumph.”

6. Mention favors in your life that are "old, yet ever new."

7. Why should we be thankful for "winter's store of ice"? for "fruittree bearing seed"?

8. Explain these words: curios, luscious, nectareous, liberal, garnered, Eden.

9. Which of these four poems most resembles this stanza by the English poet, Edmund Spenser:

AUTUMN

Then came the Autumn all in yellow clad,

As though he joy'd in his plenteous store,

Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad

That he had banished hunger.

10. Which selection in this section does the picture on page 57 illustrate? Give reasons for your answer.

II. Volunteer reports:

a. The story of Ruth; find this in the Bible. Explain how "our common mother rests and sings like Ruth."

b. The harvest celebration among the ancient Greeks.

c. Fun at harvest time one hundred years ago.

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ADDITIONAL READINGS. 1. "Apple Gathering," J. J. Pratt, in A. Marble's Nature Pictures by American Poets, 178-179. 2. "The Huskers,' J. G. Whittier. 3. "All Things Bright and Beautiful,” C. F. Alexander. 4. "Fishes and Fisheries of Our North Atlantic Seaboard," J. O. La Gorce, in National Geographic Magazine, 44: 567–634. 5. "Fruit of the Earth," W. P. Eaton, in Harper's Magazine, 144:321–330. 6. "The Waving of the Corn," S. Lanier.

6. HOW PRIMITIVE WOMAN PROVIDED FOR HER

FAMILY

OTIS TUFTON MASON

When an architect plans a house nowadays, he always provides for a kitchen. And when a woman furnishes a house, among the first things she buys are pots and pans and labor-saving devices. But the woman of long ago knew nothing about kitchens, she had none of the cooking-utensils we see every day, and she was in complete ignorance of sewing-machines, vacuum cleaners, and gas stoves. Her difficulties and her contrivances in providing for the needs of her family are shown in this selection.

The first agricultural implements used by women were those needed in gathering and harvesting. Very simple tools they were, the digging-stick and the basket. The Navajo women of the Southwest also had an ingenious wicker paddle, something like a tennis racket, that they used in harvesting the sand grass seed. Usually, however, the women harvesters cut the standing grain with stone knives or sickles. When they learned to plant seeds, they used the digging-stick to loosen and turn up the earth. From this stick, sharpened at the end, and, possibly, hardened in the fire, developed the hoe, the spade, and finally the plough drawn by man or beast.

Women also developed tools for threshing, winnowing, and grinding their grain. The first flail was a stick, and the first fanning mill for blowing away the chaff was the wind. The grinding of the hard grains until they were in a form in which they could be used for food was more difficult. For this work women came in time to employ the mortar and pestle, made either of stone or hard wood.

Primitive women had to provide for the safe storage of their grains and vegetables. Many animals had early shown the advantage of making such stores. Indeed, savages were in the habit of taking the stores of the animals, the acorns of the squirrel, and the honey of the bee, before they stored up supplies of their own. But after women learned that edible roots were best preserved in cold, damp holes, and grains in dry granaries, they were the builders and owners of many such storehouses. It is

said that women tamed the wildcat to keep their granaries free from rats and mice.

In primitive communities the men killed the game and caught the fish which were the main food supply of the tribe. When the men had slain a deer, a bear, or a buffalo, their work usually ended. The women must now go out to the game prepared to skin the game and cut it up, and carry it to camp. From that time on the work of caring for the hide and of cooking or preserving the meat was theirs.

Primitive women knew three ways to preserve meat. One was to dry it in the hot sun, another was to smoke it, and a third was to pack it in melted fat poured on hot. Some primitive people ate salt on their food, but none seem to have known of the value of salt as a preservative. In early days Indian women cut meat into thin strips and hung it in the sun to dry. After it was hard and dry, they would beat it with a stick or flail or stone until it was very fine. The powdered meat was then sewed up in sacks of buffalo rawhide and melted fat was poured over it.

Cooking was, of course, the work of primitive woman. When she placed the food before her family, no hands but hers had touched it in any stage of preparation.

The earliest method of cooking meat was by roasting or baking. The bit of meat was hung on a stick in front of the fire or wrapped in leaves and buried in the ashes. Certain nuts might be parched or roasted in the same way as we treat popcorn and peanuts.

The next advance in cooking was to do the roasting and baking in ovens or pits lined with stones. The South Sea Islanders, it is said, frequently used a huge oven twenty or thirty feet in circumference. The bottom was filled with stones on which huge fires were kindled, while other stones were piled on top. When the wood had burned, the hot stones were raked to one side and 'ripe bread-fruit was put in, after which the pit was covered with the hot stones like an arched oven. A foot or more of earth was then piled on top and the oven was left closed for a day or so. When opened all the bread-fruit was baked to a turn.

Neither of these two methods was well suited to the cooking of cereals. But by the time cereals had been added to the food

supply of the household, primitive women had discovered another way to cook. This was by boiling in a sort of pot by means of throwing in hot stones. Meat and potatoes, as well as cereals, could be cooked in this way.

The use of hot stones inside the pot to boil the food came much earlier than the application of heat outside, for at first women had no pot that was suitable to place over the fire. If they boiled by the aid of hot stones, they could use a wooden trough for a pot. Or they could use for a boiler a bowl-shaped rock, or a water-tight basket, or even a hole in the ground lined with rawhide or woven stuff. Before they could bring a pot to the fire they had to learn to make one that was fire-proof and that could be easily lifted. When they used hot stones to keep the pot boiling, all the outfit they needed was a pair of tongs to lift the hot stones, and a stick to stir the fire and to move the food. There were few cooking dishes to wash in those days.

There was no animal in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth, that wore a skin that primitive women had not turned into use for human clothing. On the American continent women knew how to cure and manufacture the hides of cats, wolves, foxes, coons, bears, seals, walrus, buffaloes, goats, squirrels, antelopes, moose, deer, elk, beavers, musk-rats, reptiles, birds, and fish.

The hides and skins of thin-skinned creatures like birds and squirrels were very easily cured by a simple drying process. They needed only to be drawn off and dried wrong side out in the sun to be completely cured. They might be made more pliable by a thorough chewing before they were sewed together.

The problem of curing the hides of large animals like the buffalo and the deer was much more difficult. The women removed the skin and fat from the inner surface, making it of uniform thickness throughout, and leaving only the epidermis and the hair or fur. They then devised some way to make the skin soft and pliable like a woolen blanket.

For some purposes it was necessary to remove the hair from the skin, a task that was most unpleasant, as it still is in a modern tannery. But primitive woman did not shrink from the undertaking. She soaked the hide either in water with which wood

ashes or some other alkali had been mixed, or she simply rolled it up and allowed it to sweat; then with a scraper, or with her hands, she removed the hair. When the hide was dry, it was almost as hard as iron. If it were to be used for a tent or for shoes, she worked the hide until it was soft and pliable, usually by pounding it with stones, or even by chewing it. When we think of *clothing today we usually do not think of hides and skins but of garments made of some sort of woven cloth.

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The making of baskets is a kind of weaving, an art in which primitive woman was highly skilled. The weaving of cloth, however, began with the spinning or making of yarn. This art originated when some unknown woman ages ago saw that the fibers of certain plants could be twisted to make a strong yarn, and that the same result could be obtained with the hair or wool of animals. The problems that primitive woman had to solve in the making of cloth were, first, to find materials and get them in condition for spinning; second, to invent tools that would help her twist the yarn and weave the cloth. In her search for materials she found that hemp, flax, and cotton would yield excellent fibers, and that the hair of the camel and goat and the wool of the sheep could be used for the same purpose. In China she learned the value of the product of the silk worm. For her tools she contrived the simple spindle and the loom which have continued in use, almost in the form of early days, until little more than a century ago.

Primitive woman was absolutely dependent upon herself for utensils and tools. She made her own mortars and pestles and mills for grinding corn; her own stone malls for pounding and breaking; her own knives and scrapers. The utensils for which she probably had the greatest need at first were vessels in which she could carry and store her food-stuffs. She needed baskets to carry home her fruits, vegetables, and grain. She needed jars in which to carry water. She needed pots in which to boil her meat. Her ingenuity in meeting these needs produced a variety of utensils which are the forerunners of the kitchen equipment of the present day.

-Adapted.

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