boards large enough for the full spread of
the burlap. With paint and brush he began his work. The first coat was
a tiller; the next, a thicker one, gave body to the cloth, and when
this was rubbed down to a smooth surface the last coat was prepared.
This was of a different color and was spread on thick. Then, with a
straight edge, a piece of board with a true, thin edge, reaching
across the whole surface of painted cloth, the finishing touches were
put on. Commencing at one end of the fabric, the straight edge was
moved back and forth, and straight along over the fresh paint once or
twice, and the whole thing left to dry.

The first table covers were great curiosities, and the homes of the
Baileys were visited by all the neighboring housewives, who were
anxious to see "how they worked." Of course, it was easy to keep them
clean, and they saved the woodwork of the table, which was
recommendation enough. To see a cloth was to covet it, and it was not
long before Ezekiel Bailey had a considerable business. Employing a
boy to help him, he turned out table cloths as fast as his limited
facilities would permit, and, as he progressed, new ideas for
decorating took shape in his mind. In less than a year he had men out
on the road selling them.

The turning out to perfection of an oilcloth carpet in those days was
a task that would make a person in these piping times of labor-saving
machinery wish for something easier. All the smoothing or rubbing down
was done by hand. Heavy, long-bladed knives, as big as the "Sword of
Bunker Hill," were used to scrape down the rough body coats of paint,
and a smooth surface, on which to stamp the geometrical figures in
colors, was fetched after long and laborious polishing with bricks and
pumice stone.

Drummers employed by Mr. Bailey traveled to Massachusetts, to New
York, and away down into the South, and ere long the demand for
oilcloth carpeting became so general that other factories were built
and made to chatter and clank with the new industry. There was living
not far from East Winthrop at this time a shrewd, wideawake Yankee
farmer named Sampson, who had kept his weather eye peeled on the
progress of Ezekiel Bailey, and when housewives everywhere began to
yearn for the new carpeting, taking a neighbor in as a partner, Mr.
Sampson built a factory, and in a very short time was in a position to
be considered a formidable rival of Mr. Bailey.

But the originator of the oilcloth carp