79 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



do not stop to gossip about the newest scandal, yonr neighbor's 

 new bonnet, or forthcoming party, but pause and bend your ear 

 in the quiet places where the secrets of all life are told. 



You have many hindrances in fashion and conventionalities. 

 Do you wish you could stop and live differently — live more sim- 

 ply ; wish you could offer family and guest alike simple bread, 

 vegetables, and fruit without the fuss of the many courses and 

 interminable combinations which consume time and often ruin 

 the digestions and tempers of those who partake of them ; wish 

 you could get a few simple, artistic patterns for your own and 

 your children's garments, and use them year after year without 

 all this harassing discussion of what is style and fashion ; wish 

 you need go to no large parties, or ever give any, but let the few 

 chosen friends come when they desire and take you and your 

 home life as they find them ? Do you wish all these ? Then prove 

 the desire by making them all true. But you answer, " I can not 

 unless everybody else does." 'Tis the old story of " foxes and 

 tails." We actually follow the maxim, "your conscience, not 

 mine " ; and forever is asked not, Is it right ? but "What will they 

 think ? 



Why not make these radical changes ? Every step of progress 

 was once a difference which some brave spirit bore alone. Instead 

 of fearing to be different, one may be proud and thankful to have 

 found a better way to live : " The great world will come round 

 to you." 



♦»» 



COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 



By HENRY V. MEIGS. 



IN The Popular Science Monthly for January, 1890, appeared an 

 article from the pen of Mr. Edward Atkinson, under the title 

 The Future Situs of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States. 

 In this essay Mr. Atkinson writes of what he understands to a re- 

 markable degree, but I am confident that in some particulars there 

 is a more favorable outlook for cotton manufacturing in the South 

 than he is aware of. 



First, as to the matter of sufficient humidity in the air, which, 

 as he truly says, is so essential to success, especially in the manu- 

 facture of the finer numbers of yarn. An old gray-headed carder 

 once told me that in his early experience in Scotland he was very 

 much annoyed by the refusal of the drawing-frame slivers to fall 

 into the eight, ten, and twelve inch cans supplied for their recep- 

 tion. This was before the invention of the pressing rollers, which 

 force the slivers down where they should go. In his vexation one 

 day, having a belt-awl in his hand, he raised his arm and plunged 



