f the deer--though how the Indians ever thought of using
them is a mystery. Later, the white folk tried to tan with pigs'
brains; but however valuable the brains of a pig may be to himself,
they do not contain the properties of soda ash which made those of
the deer useful for this purpose.

[Illustration: CUTTING HIDES INTO GLOVES

The hides are kept in racks, and before cutting are stretched by hand.
Then the steel die cuts out the shape of the glove. Notice the
curiously shaped cut for the thumb.]

Years ago, when a man set out to manufacture gloves, usually only a
few dozen pairs, he cut out a pattern from a shingle or a piece of
pasteboard, laid it upon a skin, marked around it, and cut it out with
shears. Pencils were not common, but the glovemaker was fully equal
to making his own. He melted some lead, ran it into a crack in the
kitchen floor--and cracks were plentiful--and then used this
"plummet," as it was called, for a marker. After cutting the large
piece for the front and back of the glove, he cut out from the scraps
remaining the "fourchettes," or _forks_; that is, the narrow strips
that make the sides of the fingers. Smaller scraps were put in to welt
the seams; and all this went off in great bundles to farmhouses to
be sewed by the farmers' wives and daughters for the earning of
pin-money. If the gloves were to be the most genteel members of the
buckskin race, there was added to the bundle a skein of silk, with
which a slender vine was to be worked on the back of the hand. The
sewing was done with a needle three-sided at the point, and a stout
waxed thread was used. A needle of this sort went in more easily than
a round one, but even then it was rather wearisome to push it through
three thicknesses of stout buckskin. Moreover, if the sewer happened
to take hold of the needle too near the point, the sharp edges were
likely to make little cuts in her fingers.

After a while sewing machines were invented, and factories were built,
and now in a single county of the State of New York many thousand
people are at work making various kinds of leather coverings for their
own hands and those of other folk. Better methods of tanning have been
discovered, and many sorts of leather are now used, especially for
the heavier gloves. Deer are not so common as they used to be, and a
"buckskin" glove is quite likely to have been made of the hide of
a cow or a horse. "Kid" generally comes from the body of a sheep
instea