at right angles with the top
of the T. The wool was carefully placed on one comb, and with careful
strokes the other comb laid the long staple smooth for hard-twisted
spinning. It was tedious and slow work, and a more skilful operation
than carding; and the combs had to be kept constantly heated; but no
machine-combing ever equalled hand-combing. There was a good deal of
waste in this combing, that is, large clumps of tangled wool called noil
were combed out. They were not really wasted, we may be sure, by our
frugal ancestors, but were spun into coarse yarn.

An old author says: "The action of spinning must be learned by practice,
not by relation." Sung by the poets, the grace and beauty of the
occupation has ever shared praise with its utility.

Wool-spinning was truly one of the most flexible and alert series of
movements in the world, and to its varied and graceful poises our
grandmothers may owe part of the dignity of carriage that was so
characteristic of them. The spinner stood slightly leaning forward,
lightly poised on the ball of the left foot; with her left hand she
picked up from the platform of the wheel a long slender roll of the soft
carded wool about as large round as the little finger, and deftly wound
the end of the fibres on the point of the spindle. She then gave a
gentle motion to the wheel with a wooden peg held in her right hand,
and seized with the left the roll at exactly the right distance from the
spindle to allow for one "drawing." Then the hum of the wheel rose to a
sound like the echo of wind; she stepped backward quickly, one, two,
three steps, holding high the long yarn as it twisted and quivered.
Suddenly she glided forward with even, graceful stride and let the yarn
wind on the swift spindle. Another pinch of the wool-roll, a new turn of
the wheel, and _da capo_.

The wooden peg held by the spinner deserves a short description; it
served the purpose of an elongated finger, and was called a driver,
wheel-peg, etc. It was about nine inches long, an inch or so in
diameter; and at about an inch from the end was slightly grooved in
order that it might surely catch the spoke and thus propel the wheel.

It was a good day's work for a quick, active spinner to spin six skeins
of yarn a day. It was estimated that to do that with her quick backward
and forward steps she walked over _twenty miles_.

The yarn might be wound directly upon the wooden spindle as it was spun,
or at the end of the