NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



berry, the footl-plant of the silk bombyx {Bombyx mori) ; 

 in rearing the larvae, gathering and caring for the 

 cocoons, and reeling therefrom the raw silk. Think of 

 the hosts engaged in dyeing and weaving the silk, and 

 in devising and making the machinery employed therein. 

 Then follow, in imagination, the ramification of com- 

 merce for the distribution and sale of the product. Go 

 into shops and homes where silken garments are being 

 made. Picture the part silk has played in the social 

 life of men and women. What high functions of ancient 

 and modern times, in state and church and society, have 

 not owed the chief accessory in their brilliancy and 

 beauty to the silk worm's humble industry as developed 

 by man? 



Even a single branch of the great industry — as the 

 manufacture and use of sewing-silk — presents striking 

 pictures of typical incidents and stages in civilized life. 

 There is the poor needle-woman sewing "with double 

 thread" in ill-requited toil. There is the New England 

 factory-girl fulfilling her daily round of duty with all 

 the possibilities of bright American womanhood potent 

 within her. There is the fair maid who bends over 

 embroidery frame and hoops, and stitches in a flower or 

 a winged insect, laying in every shade with a thought 

 or prayer of love, while her cheeks rival in color the 

 brightest thread she sews. There is the designer of pat- 

 terns, racking the brain and gleaning in all fields of 

 nature and technical art for suggestions, ideas, and 

 forms available for stamping. There are the visions of 

 home and of mother, or of wife, and the humble art that 

 love glorifies as her deft hands bind into memory a 

 hundred homely services with needle and sewing-silk. 



But the series may as well stop here, unless one would 



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