Page:Monthly scrap book, for October.pdf/22



Results of Machinery.—In the seventeenth century, France began to manufacture into stuffs the raw cotton imported from India, as Italy had done a century before. A cruel act of despotism drove the best French workmen, who were protestants, into England, and we learnt the manufacture. The same act of despotism, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, caused the settlement of silk-manufacturers in Spital-fields. We did not make any considerable progress in the art, nor did we use the material of cotton exclusively in making up the goods. The warp, or longitudinal threads of the cloth, were of flax, the weft only was of cotton; for we could not twist it hard enough by hand to serve both purposes. This weft was spun entirely by hand with a distaff and spindle,—the same tedious process which prevails amongst the natives of India. Our manufacture in spite of all these disadvantages, continued to increase; so that about 1700, although there were fifty thousand spindles at work in Lancashire alone, the weaver found the greatest difficulty in procuring a sufficient supply of thread. Neither weaving nor spinning were then carried on in large factories. They were domestic occupations. The women of a family worked at the distaff or the hand-wheel, and there were two operations necessary in this department; roving, or coarse spinning, reduced the carded cotton to the thickness of a quill, and the spinner afterwards drew out and twisted the roving into weft fine enough for the weaver. A writer on the cotton manufacture, Mr Guest, states, that very few weavers could procure weft enough to keep themselves constantly employed. "It was no uncommon thing," he says, "for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day; and when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon or gown was necessary to quicken the exertions of the spinner.

A Ticklish Way to Please.—It was said of Marlborough that he could deny a favour asked, and yet dismiss the person to whom he denied it, better pleased than some other men could do who really conferred the favour. A very old story, told of three brothers, will in some measure explain this seeming paradox of the gallant General. They belonged to a family blessed with abundance of high-sounding titles, but very deficient in that vulgar necessary "the king's corn." It was the custom in bygone days, when visiting a noble family—were it only at a dinner party—to give money to all the servants of the mansion according to their respective stations. The two elder brothers were often sorely pinched on such occasions to maintain a becoming dignity towards the menials, while the younger brother took such matters very coolly, and went through a trial scene of this nature with the utmost unconcern. One day the three brothers dined at Lord B's, whose retinue was sufficiently formidable. On retiring from the banquet, they found the servants ranked up along the passage "in horrible array," from the portly butler down to the frigid whipper-in. When the elder brothers had done their best to please the servants, their douceurs were received with a cold sort of gravity, unaccompanied by any of those