thread from each spool was gathered up by an experienced warper who carried all the threads back and forth on the large warping-bars; this was a difficult task; only the brightest negro women were warpers. The thread had been dyed before spooling and the vari-colored cob-spools could be arranged to make stripes lengthwise of the cloth; and the hanks had also been dipped in a boiling-hot sizing made of meal and water. The warp-threads were carefully taken from the bars and rolled upon the wooden beam of the loom, the ends passed through the sley and tied. The weaver then began her work. The thread for the filling (called the woof by the negroes) was reeled from the hank on the winding-blades, upon small canes about four inches long which, when full, were placed in the wooden shuttles. These women spun and wove all the clothing worn by the negroes on the plantation; cotton cloth for women and men in the summer time; and jeans for the men; linseywoolsey for the women and children for winter. All were well clothed. The women taught us to spin, but the weavers were cross and would not let us touch the loom, for they said we broke the threads in the warp. My grandmother never interfered with them when they were careful in their work. We would say, 'Please make Aunt Rhody let me weave!' She answered, 'No, she is managing the loom; if she is willing, very well; if not, you must not worry her.' We thought it great fun to try to weave, but generally had to pay Aunt Rhody for our meddling by giving her cake, ribbons, or candy."

The colonists were constantly trying to find new materials for spinning, and also used many makeshifts. Parkman, in his Old Régime, tells that in the year 1704, when a ship was lost that was to bring cloth and wool to Quebec, a Madame de Rèpentigny, one of the aristocrats of the FrenchCanadian colony, spun and wove coarse blankets of nettle and linden bark. Similar experiments were made by the English colonists. Coarse thread was spun out of nettle-fibre by pioneers in western New York. Levi Beardsley, in his Reminiscences, tells of his mother at the close of the last century, in her frontier home at Richfield Springs, weaving bags and coarse garments from the nettles which grew so rankly everywhere in that vicinity. Deer hair and even cow's hair was collected from the tanners, spun with some wool, and woven into a sort of felted blanket.

Silk-grass, a much-vaunted product, was sent back to England on the first ships and was everywhere being experimented with. Coarse wicking was spun from the down of the milkweed — an airy, feathery material that always looks as if it ought to be put to many uses, yet never has seemed of much account in any trial that has been made of it.

CHAPTER X

HAND-WEAVING

NY one who passed through a New England village on a week day a century ago, or rode

A

up to the door of a Pennsylvania or Virginia house, would probably be greeted with a heavy thwack-thwack from within doors, a regular sound which would readily be recognized by every one at that time as proceeding from weaving on a handloom. The presence of these looms was, perhaps, not so universal in every house as that of their homespun companions, the great and little wheels, for they required more room; but they were found in every house of any considerable size, and in many also where they seemed to fill half the building. Many households had a loom-room, usually in an ell part of the house; others used an attic or a shed-loft as a weaving-room. Every farmer's daughter knew how to weave as well as to spin, yet it was not recognized as wholly woman's work as was spinning; for there was a trade of hand-weaving for men, to which they were apprenticed. Every

town had professional weavers. They were a universally respected class, and became the ancestors of many of the wealthiest and most influential citizens to-day. They took in yarn and thread to weave on their looms at their own homes at so much a yard; wove their own yarn into stuffs to sell; had apprentices to their trade; and also went out working by the day at their neighbors' houses, sometimes carrying their looms many miles with them.

Weavers were a universally popular element of the community. The travelling weaver was, like all other itinerant tradesmen of the day, a welcome newsmonger; and the weaver who took in weaving was often a stationary gossip, and gathered inquiring groups in his loom-room; even children loved to go to his door to beg for bits of colored yarnthrums - which they used in their play, and also tightly braided to wear as shoestrings, hair-laces, etc.

The hand-loom used in the colonies, and occasionally still run in country towns to-day, is an historic machine, one of great antiquity and dignity. It is, perhaps, the most absolute bequest of past centuries which we have had, unchanged, in domestic use till the present time. You may see a loom like the Yankee one shown here in Giotto's famous fresco in the Campanile, painted in 1335; another, still the same, in Hogarth's Idle Apprentice, painted just four hun

dred years later. Many tribes and nations have hand-looms resembling our own; but these are exactly like it. Hundreds of thousands of men and women of the generations of these seven centuries since Giotto's day have woven on just such looms as our grandparents had in their homes.

This loom consists of a frame of four square timber posts, about seven feet high, set about as far apart as the posts of a tall four-post bedstead, and connected at top and bottom by portions of a frame. From post to post across one end, which may be called the back part of the loom, is the yarn-beam, about six inches in diameter. Upon it are wound the warp-threads, which stretch in close parallels from it to the cloth-beam at the front of the loom. The cloth-beam is about ten inches in diameter, and the cloth is wound as the weaving proceeds.

The yarn-beam or yarn-roll or warp-beam was ever a very important part of the loom. It should be made of close-grained, well-seasoned wood. The iron axle should be driven in before the beam is turned. If the beam is ill-turned and irregular in shape, no even, perfect woof can come from it. The slightest variation in its dimensions makes the warp run off unevenly, and the web never "sets" well, but has some loose threads.

We have seen the homespun yarn, whether linen