simplicity both of innocence and ignorance; their
days had little variety, and life was not altogether easy, and, like the
web they wove, it was sometimes narrow. I am always touched when
handling these homespun linens with a consciousness of nearness to the
makers; with a sense of the energy and strength of those enduring women
who were so full of vitality, of unceasing action, that it does not seem
to me they can be dead.

The strong, firm linen woven in many struggling country homes was too
valuable and too readily exchangeable and salable to be kept wholly for
farm use, especially when there were so few salable articles produced on
the farm. It was sold or more frequently exchanged at the village store
for any desired commodity, such as calico, salt, sugar, spices, or tea.
It readily sold for forty-two cents a yard. Therefore the boys and even
the fathers did not always have linen shirts to wear. From the tow
which had been hatchelled out from harl a coarse thread was spun and
cloth was woven which was made chiefly into shirts and smocks and tow
"tongs" or "skilts," which were loose flapping summer trousers which
ended almost half-way from the knee to the ankle. This tow stuff was
never free from prickling spines, and it proved, so tradition states, an
absolute instrument of torture to the wearer, until frequent washings
had worn it out and thus subdued its knots and spines.

A universal stuff woven in New Hampshire by the Scotch-Irish
linen-weavers who settled there, and who influenced husbandry and
domestic manufactures and customs all around them, was what was known as
striped frocking. It was worn also to a considerable extent in
Connecticut and Massachusetts. The warp was strong white cotton or tow
thread, the weft of blue and white stripes made by weaving alternately a
shuttleful of indigo-dyed homespun yarn and one of white wool or tow.
Many boys grew to manhood never wearing, except on Sundays, any kind of
coat save a long, loose, shapeless jacket or smock of this striped
frocking, known everywhere as a long-short. The history of the old town
of Charmingfare tells of the farmers in that vicinity tying tight the
two corners of this long-short at the waist and thus making a sort of
loose bag in which various articles could be carried. Sylvester Judd, in
his _Margaret_, the classic of old New England life, has his country
women dressed also in long-shorts, and tells of the same fabric.

Another material which