invention in straw-plaiting. A Connecticut girl, Miss Sophia Woodhouse,
was given a prize for "leghorn hats" which she had plaited; and she took
out a patent in 1821 for a new material for bonnets. It was the stalks,
above the upper joint, of spear-grass and redtop grass growing so
profusely in Weathersfield. From this she had a national reputation,
and a prize of twenty guineas was given her the same year by the London
Society of Arts. The wife of President John Quincy Adams wore one of
these bonnets, to the great pride of her husband.

When the bonnet was braided and sewed into shape, it had to be bleached,
for it was the dark natural straw. I don't know the domestic process in
general use, but an ingenious family of sisters in Newburyport thus
accomplished their bleaching. They bored holes in the head of a barrel;
tied strings to each new bonnet; passed the strings through the holes
and carefully plugged the openings with wood. This left the bonnets
hanging inside the barrel, which was set over an old-fashioned
foot-stove filled with hot coals on which sulphur had been placed. The
fumes of the burning sulphur arose and filled the barrel, and were
closely retained by quilts wrapped around it. When the bonnets were
taken out, they were clear and white. The base of a lignum-vitae mortar
made into the proper shape with layers of pasteboard formed the mould on
which the bonnet crown was pressed.

Even before they could spin girls were taught to knit, as soon as their
little hands could hold the needles. Sometimes girls four years of age
could knit stockings. Boys had to knit their own suspenders. All the
stockings and mittens for the family, and coarse socks and mittens for
sale, were made in large numbers. Much fine knitting was done, with many
intricate and elaborate stitches; those known as the "herring-bone" and
"fox and geese" were great favorites. By the use of curious stitches
initials could be knit into mittens; and it is said that one young New
Hampshire girl, using fine flaxen yarn, knit the whole alphabet and a
verse of poetry into a pair of mittens; which I think must have been
long-armed mitts for ladies' wear, to have space enough for the poetry.

To knit a pair of double mittens was a sharp and long day's work. Nancy
Peabody's brother of Shelburne, New Hampshire, came home one night and
said he had lost his mittens while chopping in the woods. Nancy ran to a
bundle of wool in the garret, carded and spun a