omestic use till the present time. You
may see a loom like the Yankee one shown here in Giotto's famous fresco
in the Campanile, painted in 1335; another, still the same, in Hogarth's
_Idle Apprentice_, painted just four hundred years later. Many tribes
and nations have hand-looms resembling our own; but these are exactly
like it. Hundreds of thousands of men and women of the generations of
these seven centuries since Giotto's day have woven on just such looms
as our grandparents had in their homes.

This loom consists of a frame of four square timber posts, about seven
feet high, set about as far apart as the posts of a tall four-post
bedstead, and connected at top and bottom by portions of a frame. From
post to post across one end, which may be called the back part of the
loom, is the yarn-beam, about six inches in diameter. Upon it are wound
the warp-threads, which stretch in close parallels from it to the
cloth-beam at the front of the loom. The cloth-beam is about ten inches
in diameter, and the cloth is wound as the weaving proceeds.

The yarn-beam or yarn-roll or warp-beam was ever a very important part
of the loom. It should be made of close-grained, well-seasoned wood. The
iron axle should be driven in before the beam is turned. If the beam is
ill-turned and irregular in shape, no even, perfect woof can come from
it. The slightest variation in its dimensions makes the warp run off
unevenly, and the web never "sets" well, but has some loose threads.

We have seen the homespun yarn, whether linen or woollen, left in
carefully knotted skeins after being spun and cleaned, bleached, or
dyed. To prepare it for use on the loom a skein is placed on the swift,
an ingenious machine, a revolving cylindrical frame made of strips of
wood arranged on the principle of the lazy-tongs so the size can be
increased or diminished at pleasure, and thus take on and hold firmly
any sized skein of yarn. This cylinder is supported on a centre shaft
that revolves in a socket, and may be set in a heavy block on the floor
or fastened to a table or chair. A lightly made, carved swift was a
frequent lover's gift. I have a beautiful one of whale-ivory,
mother-of-pearl, and fine white bone which was made on a three years'
whaling voyage by a Nantucket sea-captain as a gift to his waiting
bride; it has over two hundred strips of fine white carved bone. Both
quills for the weft and spools for the warp may be wound from the swift
by a quilling