An account of housewifely duties in my great-grandmother’s home was thus written, in halting rhyme, by one of her sons when he too was old:—
The boys dressed the flax, the girls spun the tow,
The music of mother’s footwheel was not slow.
The flax on the bended pine distaff was spread,
With squash shell of water to moisten the thread.
Such were the pianos our mothers did keep
Which they played on while spinning their children to sleep.
My mother I’m sure must have borne off the medal,
For she always was placing her foot on the pedal.
The warp and the filling were piled in the room,