Mr. Talbot has a wide acquaintance among mill men, and some of them volunteered to come to the Talbot home and show them how to read patterns, that they might reproduce old hand-loom designs. So they came, and were given some hand-made goods to read. One by one they confessed that, while they could read any machine-woven pattern, the difference in the methods of the machine and the hand looms was great enough to puzzle them. They could not read the patterns, that is, tell how they were woven—so many threads this way, so many that way, and the rest. They gave it up. Mrs. Talbot, who had a rare combination of gumption and energy, tackled the problem and puzzled it out. She picked up a little here and a little there, and was soon weaving, and weaving patterns, at that.

This was early last October. The first loom had no sooner been set up and started than Mr. and Mrs. Talbot found a new difficulty. The work was fascinating, the hours they had to give to it were few, and each wanted to use the loom at about the same time. So Mr. Talbot commissioned the man he had bought it from to find and buy another for them. The second one was found in Johnston, the town from which the first had come, and was set up beside the other. After that they peacefully wove every evening side by side.

They had to work everything out from the beginning. Their thread they bought, but they had to build a warping frame, after the old fashion, and warp and link the thread themselves, running four threads at a time, up and down the warping frame. It takes them about four hours to wind fifty yards of warp for forty-inch cloth. Warping the yarn is the most essential feature of the whole process, for if it is not done well, the yarn will not feed easily, and the weaving will be stopped.

Everything about the looms, except the operators and the harnesses, is old. The harnesses, which came with the looms, were of cord, and the new ones are superior. The reeds used in the looms are of split reed, and Mrs. Talbot considers them better than the modern ones of steel. The looms themselves are built of white oak, and as their history is known, Mr. Talbot is safe in the statement that they are each more than 200 years old. He has even procured the square and compasses with which they were built. One loom is used for plain weaving, the other one for pattern work.

Mr. and Mrs. Talbot have named it the Hearthside Loom, a charmingly descriptive name, and have already produced some very handsome patterns, some of them copies of old patterns of two centuries ago, some of them from Mrs. Talbot’s ideas, or from patterns made by Mr. Talbot for their original work. They have found a good demand for their products at prices ranging from $3 a yard for tabbie weaving—the straight up and down, plain weaving—to about $5 a yard for silk goods. In linen, which costs $2.50 a yard, they use all imported Irish linen, the American linen lacking the property of lasting, the oil having been extracted from it. Wool patterns and patterns in imported cloth are worth $6 a yard, with plain wool weaving forty or forty-five inches wide, at $4 a yard, and scrim curtains at $6 a pair.

A good woman weaver can weave about four yards of linen a day, or about five yards of wool a day, on such looms as these. The Hearthside Loom takes orders for pattern work on original patterns, and its work has already proved popular among people who are able to buy goods made to last. In addition to the two large looms, Mr. Talbot has a small ribbon loom that is even older than the larger ones, while the trade-mark of the establishment is a reproduction of a hand loom small enough to be held in one hand, and hardly bigger than a large shingle.

The room in which they are placed is a veritable curiosity shop. On the wall hangs the long crane from the old glebe house of St. John’s Church, torn down last year, with other iron fire pieces; at the hearth are old iron fire dogs; all along the rear wall hang other antiques. The house is filled with old and curious things, none older or more curious, however, than the looms forming the working machinery of the Hearthside Loom.

Journal, Providence.

ERROR—MEMORIAL TREES

In our May number it is stated that Charles Sumner sent to Russia some acorns of an oak growing near the tomb of Washington, and from one of these sprang an oak now growing in Czarina Island. Dr. Samuel A. Green, Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, corrects this, showing that it was George, the brother of Charles Sumner. As he says: “The incident may seem too trivial for serious notice, but a memorial tree, if it is to have any meaning, should be deeply rooted in truth and accuracy.”