“No more awful than true, though. There are whole villages in England—and I’ve heard my father say it’s just so in Ireland and Scotland—where, from year’s end to year’s end, all that the greater part of the people do is to raise, spin, and weave flax; those that are able to, hire land; but the poor, that can’t hire land, why, the merchants find the yarn, and give them so much a yard to weave it; and old people, seventy and eighty years old, that can’t do anything else, will do a little something at that; an old wife, that can’t get across the floor without her crutch, and her head as white as a sheet, will sit in the corner and croon a song, because hunger drives her to it: men and women weave the year round.”
“Men weave?”
“Yes, indeed; hundreds and thousands of them never do anything else all their lives—couldn’t do anything else.”
“I declare! a man weaving, sitting down behind a loom, doing women’s work!”
“Yes, sitting down behind a loom; and thank God for the privilege.”
“I guess they would keep me there a good while. I’d put on a petticoat, and take a dish-cloth in my hand, and done with it. Only think of Joe Griffin, Uncle Isaac, and our Ben weaving!”
“It is so there; and you go to one of their houses, knock at the door, and a man will come to open it, with his beard stuck full of thrums and lint.”
“So you see, John,” said Sally, “where sail-cloth comes from. You know old Mr. Blaisdell?”
“Yes.”
“He was a weaver before he came to this country; and they say sometimes, of a rainy day, when his son’s wife has a piece in the loom, he’ll get in and weave like everything.”