SEWING BY HAND.
All this relates to sewing by hand, with a single needle and one thread. It is stitch by stich, first one, then another; it is like the brook,—"it goes on forever." It is like the clock that repeats its tick tock, tick tock by the hour, by the day, by the week, by the year. Perhaps many seamstresses would not recognize the duty of blessing the man who invented the needle. The poet Hood has told this side of the story in his famous poem, "The Song of the Shirt."
"With fingers weary and worn.
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sits in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
In poverty, hunger, and dirt.
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