CHAPTER VI.
THE SAD ABUSE OF OLD MEHITABLE About this time there occurred a domestic episode with which Halstead was imperishably connected in the family annals.
In those days the family butter was churned in the kitchen by hand power, and often laboriously, in an upright dasher churn which Addison and Theodora had christened Old Mehitable.

The butter had been a long time coming one morning; but finally the cream which for an hour or more had been thick, white and mute beneath the dasher strokes began to swash in a peculiar way, giving forth after each stroke a sound that they thought resembled, _Mehitable--Mehitable--Mehitable_.
That old churn was said to be sixty-six years old even then.

There was little to wear out in the old-fashioned dasher churns, made as they were of well-seasoned pine or spruce, with a "butter cup" turned from a solid block of birch or maple, and the dasher staff of strong white ash.

One of them sometimes outlasted two generations of housewives; they were simple, durable and easily kept clean, but hard to operate.
Our acquaintance with Mehitable had begun very soon after our arrival at the old farm.

I remember that one of the first things the old Squire said to us was, "Boys, now that our family is so largely increased, I think that you will have to assist your grandmother with the dairy work, particularly the churning, which comes twice a week." Tuesdays and Fridays were the churning days, and on those mornings I remember that we were wont to peer into the kitchen as we came to breakfast and mutter the unwelcome tidings to one another that old Mehitable was out there waiting--tidings followed immediately by two gleeful shouts of, "It isn't my turn!"-- and glum looks from the one of us whose unfortunate lot it was to ply the dasher.
Addison, I recollect, used to take his turn without much demur or complaint, and he had a knack of getting through with it quickly as a rule, especially in summer.