The Irish people, who are so proud of their island, point with additional pride to what some of their linen towns have done. As we were riding past the little village of Bessbrook a clergyman took pains to point out to us the evidences of thrift. He said that town lacked three p's that are very troublesome to other towns all over the world. They were the pawnshop, the public house, and the police. The good character of the people made these entirely unnecessary for their town. But these good qualities are not universal there, for in some of the larger places intemperance is remarkably bad.
We saw the work in all its stages at Belfast. Queen Victoria gets her table linen from that city, and we saw several pieces in the loom that had the royal arms upon them. To get the finest fabric the fiber is kept moist in both spinning and weaving. Nothing can be more beautiful than the silky, transparent stuffs made there. Dry spinning is done where a coarse and heavy grade of goods is desired. American visitors in Ireland, especially the gentlemen, plan to bring home as large a quantity of linen collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs as the customs officers will allow to pass at New York free of duty.
The finest linen goods are called lawns, and this name is a modification of the French word linon, which sounds much like lawn when spoken properly. The French make many fine articles from all sorts of fibers, and seem to have recovered from the blow to their industries which came on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Some writers claim that nearly half a million skilled workers in fabrics left that country in the years around 1688.
While the battle of Waterloo was raging near Brussels and the people of rank were so strongly affected by the thunder of the guns of all Europe there were thousands of women, young and old, in that city and within hearing of the great contest who kept right on with their work, making laces. They knew somebody would win the day, and there would be a market for all sorts of finery, and the linen laces of Belgium were of much importance to society. There are many kinds of laces made in Brussels, but the kind you most see as you pass along the streets is that being made on little cushions by women sitting before their shops and houses with one eye upon their work and the other on those who are passing, hoping to get an American to pay a large price for something that he thinks he has seen made. It is not an unheard-of thing for an American to buy of one of these attractive lace-makers lace that came from the machines of Nottingham, England, for machine-made lace is much cheaper than that made by hand.
Pillow lace was probably invented by Barbara Uttmann, in the middle of the sixteenth century. She lived in St. Annaberg, Germany, and was a woman of great natural ability. She was highly honored by the Saxons, who state with pride that when she died, at the age of sixty, she had seen sixty-four of her own children and grand-children.
Point lace of the old sort was the highest form of needle art. Holy men of old gave their lives to architecture, believing they could give glory to God by work in stone beautifully carved and set in the walls of monasteries and cathedrals; so it happened that in the thirteenth century the works of their hands reached the highest point in architecture. So beautiful is their work even now that those who have studied the subject but little know the date of a building when they see its windows. But a century later the nuns had done something of the same sort. They had produced from the fine fibers of flax marvelous designs of fleecy lace fabrics that were the wonder of Christendom. Their art was buried with them. A point lace is made to-day, but it is far from the excellence of the original work, which was a constant prayer of those who gave their lives to the making of it.
A Yankee boy of twenty, Erastus Bigelow, thought it would be a good thing to try to invent a way of making coachlace by machinery. In forty days he was producing lace at three cents a yard which had cost twenty-two cents. Then he invented a loom for ingrain carpets; this made eight yards a day instead of three that the looms of the time made. In making Brussels carpet he made his chief triumph. Seven yards a day was considered a good day's work, but he made a machine that produced twenty-five yards of much better quality in the same time. He received one hundred thousand dollars for his patents. The body of Brussels carpet is built on a foundation of linen.
THE SYCAMORE WARBLER.
BELLE P. DRURY.