, a much-vaunted product, was sent back to England on the
first ships and was everywhere being experimented with. Coarse wicking
was spun from the down of the milkweed--an airy, feathery material that
always looks as if it ought to be put to many uses, yet never has seemed
of much account in any trial that has been made of it.

CHAPTER X

HAND-WEAVING

Any one who passed through a New England village on a week day a century
ago, or rode up to the door of a Pennsylvania or Virginia house, would
probably be greeted with a heavy thwack-thwack from within doors, a
regular sound which would readily be recognized by every one at that
time as proceeding from weaving on a hand-loom. The presence of these
looms was, perhaps, not so universal in every house as that of their
homespun companions, the great and little wheels, for they required more
room; but they were found in every house of any considerable size, and
in many also where they seemed to fill half the building. Many
households had a loom-room, usually in an ell part of the house; others
used an attic or a shed-loft as a weaving-room. Every farmer's daughter
knew how to weave as well as to spin, yet it was not recognized as
wholly woman's work as was spinning; for there was a trade of
hand-weaving for men, to which they were apprenticed. Every town had
professional weavers. They were a universally respected class, and
became the ancestors of many of the wealthiest and most influential
citizens to-day. They took in yarn and thread to weave on their looms at
their own homes at so much a yard; wove their own yarn into stuffs to
sell; had apprentices to their trade; and also went out working by the
day at their neighbors' houses, sometimes carrying their looms many
miles with them.

Weavers were a universally popular element of the community. The
travelling weaver was, like all other itinerant tradesmen of the day, a
welcome newsmonger; and the weaver who took in weaving was often a
stationary gossip, and gathered inquiring groups in his loom-room; even
children loved to go to his door to beg for bits of colored
yarn--thrums--which they used in their play, and also tightly braided to
wear as shoestrings, hair-laces, etc.

The hand-loom used in the colonies, and occasionally still run in
country towns to-day, is an historic machine, one of great antiquity and
dignity. It is, perhaps, the most absolute bequest of past centuries
which we have had, unchanged, in d