New England bygones . ality, and was tasteful in her few, in those days, were the complications of daily living;still I marvel how my grandmother managed to be so cultivatedand so elegant, and yet sit, hour after hour, at the loom, plyingher shuttle with no less persistence than, in spinning, she drewout her threads. Across the huge beams, under and over each other, crossedand recrossed these threads, like a spiders web. I know Ijywhat manifold toil they were gotten there: by reeling, sizing,spooling, and w^arping, before my grandmother could begin tothrow her shuttle. The work was
New England bygones . ality, and was tasteful in her few, in those days, were the complications of daily living;still I marvel how my grandmother managed to be so cultivatedand so elegant, and yet sit, hour after hour, at the loom, plyingher shuttle with no less persistence than, in spinning, she drewout her threads. Across the huge beams, under and over each other, crossedand recrossed these threads, like a spiders web. I know Ijywhat manifold toil they were gotten there: by reeling, sizing,spooling, and w^arping, before my grandmother could begin tothrow her shuttle. The work was slow, but it never were broken and carefully taken up; quills gave out,and were patiently renewed; the web grew, thread by thread,inch by inch ; the intricate pattern came out upon the surface,and pleased the weavers eye; neighbors dropped in and gossiped 74 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. over and about it. The days wore on; the worker never failedat ber ])eam ; nntib most lilcely at the close of some long suni-. -•Hor.^y 5^fi mers afternoon, the end of the warp was reached ; the treadlesstopped; the web was done. How delighted the women used THE FABM-HOUSE. 75 to be with their woven fabric, so slowly constructed, so quicklyunwound I They stretched it out, clipped its hanging threads,held it u}i to the light, and stroked and caressed it as if it werea living thing. It would have l)een a- mean web indeed had itbrought them no high satisfaction. It mav have been thatspinning and weaving, Ijy long practice, grew to be a sort ofunconscious mechanical process; that the workers, in their Ions;hours of monotonous employment, were given to meditation;and thus, Irom their double vocation, came perhaps that air ofserious dignity common among the better class of farm-housewomen. Xothing could l)e more picturesque or prettier, in country life,than the little tiax-wheel, with well-filled distaff, being jDlied ina shady doorvvay by comely matron or rosy lass. The loom,with its web an
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookpublisherphila, bookyear1883
