el and flax wheel, the latter of all grades of beauty, from those
made for the use of queens and ladies of high degree--royal for
elaboration--to the modest ashen wheel, derived from a long line of
industrious and careful foremothers, or copied by the clever Pilgrim
fathers, from some adventurous wheel which had made the long voyage from
civilized Holland to uncivilized America.

For color, the simplest and most at hand expedient was a dip in the
universal indigo tub, which waited in every "back shed" of the Puritan
homestead. One single dip in its black-looking depths and the skein of
spun lamb's wool acquired a tint like the blue of the sky. Immersion of
a day and night gave an indelible stain of a darker blue, and a week's
repose at the bottom of the pot made the wool as dark in tint as the
indigo itself. For variety in her blues, the enterprising housewife used
the sunburned "taglocks" which were too hopelessly yellow for webs of
white wool weaving, and gave them a short immersion in the tub, with the
result of a beautiful blue-green, tinged through and through with a
sunny luster, and this color was sun-fast and water-fast, capable of
holding its tint for a century.

We know how knots of living wool grow golden by dragging through dew and
lying in the sun, and how the ladies of Venice sat upon the roofs of
their palaces with locks outspread upon the encircling brims of
crownless hats, in order to capture the true Venetian tint of hair. We
do not know by what alchemy the sun _silvers_ a web spread out to
whiten, and yet _gilds_ the human tresses of ladies and yellows the
"taglocks" of sheep. Chemists may be able to explain, but simple woman,
unversed in the mysteries of chemistry, cannot. Whatever may have been
the science of it, this golden hue added to medium and dark blue a triad
of shades, which proved to be most effective when placed upon pure
white of bleached linen, or the gray-cream of the unbleached web.

The color seekers soon learned that every indelible stain was a dye, and
if little God-fearing Thomas came home with a stain of ineffaceable
green or brown on the knees of his diminutive tow breeches, the mother
carefully investigated the character of it, and if it was unmoved by the
persuasive influence of "soft soap and sun," she added it to a list
which meant knowledge. It is to be hoped that this was often considered
an equivalent for the "trouncing" which was the common penalty of
accident or inadve