3-034-820 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A winter evening in the Bavarian Tyrol, 1871. Engraving of a drawing. 'The peasantry of the mountain districts...are not yet accustomed to all the luxuries of modern civilisation. It is, perhaps, owing to thrift, more than to downright penury, that many of them dispense with the use of candles or lamps in the winter evenings. They have abundance of wood from the forest, which costs them nothing - at least, for the small sticks and the chips of cuttings found serviceable to burn on the cottage hearth. Plenty of snippings and shavings are commonly left by the indoor employments of carving or furniture-making and tool-making, to which the men of the family will sometimes devote their leisure hours. These fragments of combustible matter, otherwise useless and worthless, can be applied to save the cost of tallow candles...The spinning-wheel and distaff may well be kept agog by the fitful flare of a little chip-fire, which one of the children may tend, while listening to the old wives' tales that pass current in the company of village gossips...The light is obtained from constantly burning a small heap of wood-shavings, placed in a hole or recess in the wall, near the stove which contains the log-fire or charcoal-fire to warm the dwelling'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.