CHAPTER VII 



HOME INDUSTRIES 



It is so long since the spinning-wheel was at work in this 

 district that I cannot hear of any one in the neighbourhood 

 who remembers having seen it used, although some of my old 

 friends among the labouring folk are between eighty and 

 ninety years of age. But the old implements remain, coming 

 to light from time to time when a farm or yeoman's dwell- 

 ing changes hands, and the barely-lighted loft over the bed- 

 room floor, that has been the receptacle for lumber for 

 generations, is cleared out. 



Many of these lofts have been safe repositories for articles 

 that for a time were merely useless encumbrances, but that 

 now have acquired an antiquarian value. Spinning and 

 winding wheels have come out of them, none the worse 

 for their many years of retirement and thick coatings of dust 

 and cobwebs. 



When they are carefully cleaned, one cannot but admire 

 their simple structure, and the way their makers delighted in 

 putting pretty turned work into their legs and into the many 

 spindles that went to form their structure. 



The sight of these simple pieces of mechanism — mechanism 

 that supplemented but did not supplant hand labour — makes 

 one think how much fuller and more interesting was the rural 

 home life of the older days, when nearly everything for daily 

 use and daily food was made and produced on the farm or 

 in the immediate district; when people found their joy in 



