her. That was "religion," mamma said. Aunt Betsy would cry,
and say:

"Get up, Sarah, you make me ashamed of myself."

Yes, she would go to Mam' Sarah at the loom-house. It was considered a
great treat by Roberta to go down to the loom-house. That was where the
wool, cotton, and flax was carded, spun, and wove, then manufactured into
winter and summer clothes for the negroes on the place. Yard upon yard of
beautiful red and black flannel, blue and brown linseys, and blue and
white striped cottonades, for the women, jeans for the men, and that
coarse fabric called tow-linen made from the refuse of flax. The
wonderful counterpanes, I have mentioned before, were manufactured there
and the linen for sheets and towels. Let me tell you something curious
while I am on the subject of the loom-house: Roberta's grandmother raised
silk-worms in the room adjoining. She fed them on mulberry leaves. Mam'
Sarah told Roberta they made a noise like wind while they were feeding.
Those worms spun fluffy balls of silk, called cocoons, that the old lady
reeled her silk thread from. She had all the silk thread and embroidery
floss she needed.

There were no silk-worms raised in Roberta's time, and the room was given
up to other uses.

There was kept the huge iron mortar where the grains of corn were crushed
to make the delicious hominy Kentuckians are so fond of. When rightly
prepared each grain stands out like the beautiful white-plumed corn
captains and colonels that dance up so gaily over beds of live coals.
There were made also the tallow dips, almost the only light used in the
old days on the farms in Kentucky. Pieces of cotton wick were cut the
required length and fastened at regular intervals to sticks of wood. One
of the rows of wicks was dipped in the melted tallow, taken out and
suspended over a vessel to drip. Then another was dipped, and another,
till the same process was gone through with all. That was repeated many
times before the wicks held enough tallow to be used for candles. An
improved method was to run the wicks through tin molds, the required size
and shape, and fasten them at one end with a knot; then pour in the melted
tallow, and set the molds aside for the tallow to harden. The candles were
put in brass, silver, and bronze candlesticks, accompanied by quaint
little waiters that held snuffers, used to nip off the charred wick, as
the tallow melted away from it. Very primitive that, compared with the
brilliant lum