r thread with care;
The web enwraps the beam, the reed divides
While through the widening space the shuttle glides,
Which their swift hands receive, then poised with lead
The swinging weight strikes close the inserted thread."

A loom attachment which I puzzled over was a tomble or tumble, the word
being seen in eighteenth-century lists, etc., yet absolutely
untraceable. I at last inferred, and a weaver confirmed my inference,
that it was a corruption of temple, an attachment made of flat, narrow
strips of wood as long as the web is wide, with hooks or pins at the end
to catch into the selvage of the cloth, and keep the cloth stretched
firmly an even width while the reed beats the weft-thread into place.

There were many other simple yet effective attachments to the loom.
Their names have been upon the lips of scores of thousands of
English-speaking people, and the words are used in all treatises on
weaving; yet our dictionaries are dumb and ignorant of their existence.
There was the pace-weight, which kept the warp even; and the bore-staff,
which tightened the warp. When a sufficient length of woof had been
woven (it was usually a few inches), the weaver proceeded to do what was
called drawing a bore or a sink. He shifted the temple forward; rolled
up the cloth on the cloth bar, which had a crank-handle and ratchets;
unwound the warp a few inches, shifted back the rods and heddles, and
started afresh.

Looms and their appurtenances were usually made by local carpenters; and
it can plainly be seen that thus constant work was furnished to many
classes of workmen in every community,--wood-turners, beam-makers,
timber-sawyers, and others. The various parts of the looms were in
unceasing demand, though apparently they never wore out. The sley was
the most delicate part of the mechanism. Good sley-makers could always
command high prices for their sleys. I have seen one whole and good,
which has been in general use for weaving rag carpets ever since the War
of 1812, for which a silver dollar was paid. Spools were turned and
marked with the maker's initials. There were choice and inexplicable
lines in the shape of a shuttle as there are in a boat's hull. When a
shuttle was carefully shaped, scraped, hollowed out, tipped with steel,
and had the maker's initials burnt in it, it was a proper piece of
work, of which any craftsman might be proud. Apple-wood and boxwood were
the choice for shuttles.

Smaller loo