orking. Rosselini, the eminent hierologist, says that every modern
craftsman may see on Egyptian monuments four thousand years old,
representations of the process of his craft just as it is carried on
to-day. The paintings in the Grotto of El Kab, shown in Hamilton's
_AEgyptica_, show the pulling, stocking, tying, and rippling of flax
going on just as it is done in Egypt now. The four-tooth ripple of the
Egyptian is improved upon, but it is the same implement. Pliny gives an
account of the mode of preparing flax: plucking it up by the roots,
tying it in bundles, drying, watering, beating, and hackling it, or, as
he says, "combing it with iron hooks." Until the Christian era linen was
almost the only kind of clothing used in Egypt, and the teeming banks of
the Nile furnished flax in abundance. The quality of the linen can be
seen in the bands preserved on mummies. It was not, however, spun on a
wheel, but on a hand-distaff, called sometimes a rock, on which the
women in India still spin the very fine thread which is employed in
making India muslins. The distaff was used in our colonies; it was
ordered that children and others tending sheep or cattle in the fields
should also "be set to some other employment withal, such as spinning
upon the rock, knitting, weaving tape, etc." I heard recently a
distinguished historian refer in a lecture to this colonial statute, and
he spoke of the children _sitting upon a rock_ while knitting or
spinning, etc., evidently knowing naught of the proper signification of
the word.

The homespun industries have ever been held to have a beneficent and
peace-bringing influence on women. Wordsworth voiced this sentiment when
he wrote his series of sonnets beginning:--

"Grief! thou hast lost an ever-ready friend
Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute."

Chaucer more cynically says, through the _Wife of Bath_:--

"Deceite, weepynge, spynnynge God hath give
To wymmen kyndely that they may live."

Spinning doubtless was an ever-ready refuge in the monotonous life of
the early colonist. She soon had plenty of material to work with.
Everywhere, even in the earliest days, the culture of flax was
encouraged. By 1640 the Court of Massachusetts passed two orders
directing the growth of flax, ascertaining what colonists were skilful
in breaking, spinning, weaving, ordering that boys and girls be taught
to spin, and offering a bounty for linen grown, spun, and woven in the
colony