Page:Meta Stern Lilienthal - From Fireside to Factory (c. 1916).djvu/5



Few young men and women of the present generation are familiar with that old-time household implement, a spinning-wheel. Fewer still have ever seen a spinning-wheel in action. For spinning-wheels, for the purpose of manufacture, are as obsolete as stage-coaches for the purpose of travel. Yet there was a time—and not so very long ago—when a spinning-wheel was an essential necessity in every American homestead. There are old men and women living to-day who still remember, from their dim and distant childhood, how their mothers used to sit by the fire and spin, and much romance of the "good, old days" is associated with the spinning-wheel. It has received much attention in poetry also. Goethe, in his "Faust," has drawn an immortal picture of Gretchen at her spinning-wheel. Longfellow, in his charming epic poem, "The Courtship of Miles Standish," describes the sweet Puritan maiden, Priscilla, as

The Bible, too, has extolled the virtuous woman of the spinning wheel in those beautiful lines: "She seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh willingly with her hands. She layeth her hands to the distaff and her hands hold the spindle. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet." The virtuous woman of the Proverbs, Gretchen and Priscilla, they