inese people were producing all of these things. But they
were a selfish nation, and jealous of allowing any one else to share in
their progress. Therefore they shut the rest of the world out of their
discoveries and kept to themselves the secret of how they obtained the
products they manufactured. For China, you must know, was a great walled
country where travelers were not very welcome, and whose people mingled
little with the inhabitants of other lands. How the Chinese learned to
make silk we do not know; but there are in existence old records showing
that as far back as the year 2700 B. C., these ingenious people were
making fabrics spun from the filament taken from the cocoons of the
silkworm. There is an ancient story that the Empress See-ling-shee
hatched and raised silkworms in her garden, afterward winding the silken
thread from the cocoons and weaving a delicate gauzy tissue from the
fibres. Who taught her to do it no one can tell. Some persons think the
Chinese stole the art from India; certain it was that the inhabitants of
Persia, Tyre, and other eastern countries got silk thread from somewhere
at a very early date and used it. In fact it was because the Greeks and
Romans called the land beyond the Ganges 'Seres' that later the name
sericulture became the term applied to silk-raising."

The priest paused and gently stroked Hector's head.

"There are many ancient references to the use of silk," he went on. "We
read how Alexander the Great brought home from Persia wonderful silk
fabrics when he and Aristotle went there to collect curiosities. He even
tells how the silkworms produced this material which, by the way, he
calls bombykia; but nowhere does he tell in what place the industry had
its origin. However, he at least knew more about it than did most
people, for the common opinion was that the tissue was made from wool,
or the fibre of trees, some persons even thinking it came from the bark.
Another notion was that silk was woven from thread spun by the spider;
still others argued that the cocoanut was its source."

"How stupid of them!" ejaculated Marie.

"Ah, it was not really so strange after all, my dear," replied the
priest. "Suppose you were seeing silk for the first time. Where should
you think it came from?"

"I don't know."

"Precisely. And that is just the way the rest of the world felt at that
time," continued Pere Benedict. "Nobody knew, and in consequence
everybody made the best guess he