eplace with full
satisfaction that wonderful scratcher. For the slender recurved bracts
of the teazel heads are stiff and prickly enough to roughen thoroughly
the nap of the cloth, yet they yield at precisely the right point to
keep from injuring the fabric.

If the cloth were to be "y-touked," that is, dyed, it was done at this
period, and it was then "y-tented," spread on the tenter-field and
caught on tenter-hooks, to shrink and dry.

Nowadays, we sometimes cut or crop the nap with long shears, and boil
the web to give it a lustre, and ink it to color any ill-dyed fibres,
and press it between hot plates before it goes to the tailor's hands;
but these injurious processes were omitted in olden times. Worsted
stuffs were not fulled, but were woven of hand-combed wool.

Linen webs after they were woven had even more manipulations to come to
them than woollen stuffs. In spite of all the bleaching of the linen
thread, it still was light brown in color, and it had to go through at
least twoscore other processes, of bucking, possing, rinsing, drying,
and bleaching on the grass. Sometimes it was stretched out on pegs with
loops sewed on the selvage edge. This bleaching was called crofting in
England, and grassing in America. Often it was thus spread on the grass
for weeks, and was slightly wetted several times a day; but not too wet,
else it would mildew. In all, over forty bleaching operations were
employed upon "light linens." Sometimes they were "soured" in buttermilk
to make them purely white. Thus at least sixteen months had passed since
the flaxseed had been sown, in which, truly, the spinster had not eaten
the bread of idleness. In the winter months the fine, white, strong
linen was made into "board cloths" or tablecloths, sheets, pillow-biers,
aprons, shifts, shirts, petticoats, short gowns, gloves, cut from the
spinner's own glove pattern, and a score of articles for household use.
These were carefully marked, and sometimes embroidered with home-dyed
crewels, as were also splendid sets of bed-hangings, valances, and
testers for four-post bedsteads.

The homespun linens that were thus spun and woven and bleached were one
of the most beautiful expressions and types of old-time home life. Firm,
close-woven, and pure, their designs were not greatly varied, nor was
their woof as symmetrical and perfect as modern linens--but thus were
the lives of those who made them; firm, close-woven in neighborly
kindness, with the