Second. In the Sub-Department of Wool, in addition to being
carders, spinners, and weavers, women were dyers, handling all
the color resources of the times, boiling poke-berries in alum to
get a crimson, using sassafras for a yellow or an orange, and
producing a black by boiling the fabric with field-sorrel and
then boiling it again with logwood and copperas.
We pass over, as trivial, the making of flax and wool stuffs into
articles of actual use. We say nothing about the transformation
of cloth into clothes, table-covers, napkins; nothing about the
weaving of yarn on little lap looms into the narrow fabrics for
hair-laces, glove-ties, belts, garters, and hat-bands; nothing
about the incessant knitting of yarn into mittens and stockings;
nothing about a host of other details. They were for idle
moments.
Sweet domestic days, when girls stayed at home and helped their
mothers and let father support the family!
It seems as if even Rip Van Winkle, in his most shiftless mood,
ought to have been able to support a large number of daughters
under such conditions.
Does it astonish you that they matured young? There, all about
them, from babyhood, were the basic processes by which the world
was sheltered, clothed, and fed.
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