=) 7 prosaic fabric of our daily lives. eabseae wate

In the fading days of November, chilled fingers, tingling ears, and the skim of ice on wayside pools and brooks served grim notice that the somber season of the year was upon us; that, ere long, Old Boreas would come roar- ‘ing down from the Pole, bringing plummeting temperatures, swirling snow- | drifts, ice-bound creeks and rivers. In short, we were being put on notice that the mild, hazy days of Indian summer were definitely in the past. It was time to seal houses and cattle barns against the howling gales that would search out. the tiniest cranny in walls and foundations. It was time for the annual rite of "banking the house.”

In that pre-World War One era, the heating facilities of the average farmhouse were limited and not overly efficient. Insulation, as we know it today, was unheard of. The kitchen range, with the assistance of a hall, or parlor, stove.comprised the heating system. Actually, the only room in the house that could be adequately heated was the kitchen. In this age of almost universal electric power availability, when nearly all country houses have some form of central heating that keeps them comfortably warm in the bitterest weather, all this may be quite beyond the comprehension of the younger generation. We accepted those conditions as the normal accompaniments of an Island winter.

Without careful banking, houses and barns would have become practically unlivable during the frigid nights of January and February. Potatoes, turnips, other root crops, and fruits stored in the cellar would have been destroyed. For the northern, western, and eastern sides of the buildings, we built a mound of tightly-packed clay against the walls to a height of about three feet above the ground. For southern exposures we used sawdust. But, even with all these precautions, there were occasions when articles

in the food storage bins were damaged by frost. An ideal experience in the