he mixed specimens of
needlework art which have succeeded them, but cannot be properly called
their descendants.

The possession of a good piece of old crewelwork, done in this country,
is as strong a proof of respectable ancestry as a patent of nobility,
since no one in the busy early colonial days had time for such work save
those whose abundant leisure was secured by ample means and liberal
surroundings. The incessant social and intellectual activity demanded by
modern conditions of life was uncalled for. No woman, be she gentle or
simple, had stepped from the peaceful obscurity of home into the field
of the world to war for its prizes or rewards. If the man to whom she
belonged failed to win bread or renown, the women who were bound in his
family starved for the one or lived without the luster of the other.

I have shown that even in the early days of flax growing and indigo
dyeing the New England farmer's wife had come into her heritage, not
only of materials, but of the implements of manufacture. She had the
small flax wheel which dwelt in the keeping room, where she could sit
and spin like a lady of place and condition, and the large woolen wheel
standing in the mote-laden air of the garret, through which she walked
up and down as she twisted the yarn.

Later, the colonial dame, if she belonged to the prosperous class--for
there were classes, even in the beginning of colonial life--had her
beautifully shaped mahogany linen wheel, made by the skillful artificers
of England or Holland, more beautiful perhaps, but not more capable than
that of the farm wife, whittled and sandpapered into smoothness by her
husband or sons, and both were used with the same result.

The pioneer woodworker had a lively appreciation of the new woods of the
new country, and made free use of the abundant wild cherry for the
furniture called for by the growing prosperity of the settlements, its
close grain and warm color giving it the preference over other native
woods, excepting always the curly and bird's-eye maple, which were
novelties to the imported artisan.

I remember that "curly maple" was a much prized wood in my own
childhood, and that after carefully searching for the outward marks of
it among the trees of the farm, I asked about the shape of its leaves
and the color of its bark, so that I might know it--for children were
supposed to know species of trees by sight in my childhood. "Why," said
my mother, "it looks like any ot