Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/141

Rh flowing, gathered with a blue girdle about the waist, reaching somewhat below the knee. There was no corset-factory at Mimosa Vale. Material was not furnished, or aid given, for the manufacture of needless trappings and trammels. The consequence was that the women were as strong as the men. The two doctors of the community spent most of their time at the Perfume farm. For the men were being made red flannel shirts, white trousers, and white military-cut jackets. Waistcoats were discredited as unnecessary.

Some girls were engaged plaiting straw, others shaping and stitching hats—the men's with high crown, the women's with broad brim. Others were affixing red trimmings or bands.

Adjoining the Grotto was "the Bower," consisting of a hall with sides opening on to a garden, similar in arrangement to the Grotto, save that more machinery in the shape of sewing-machines, &c. was disposed about it. Only a partition, now pushed aside, separated the two enclosures. Here in the morning a party of boot-makers had wrought. Girls now occupied the room, sewing "uppers" and other concomitants for boot manufacture. (High heels, tapering toes, and kindred abominations were discarded.) Women wore sensible boots like the men, and walked, worked, and ran as though at length locomotion was not penance.

At one end of this building some girls and boys, with a few old men and women—grandfathers and grandmothers—were engaged in basket, brush, and broom manufacture. The broom-millet was grown most successfully on the estate. The stalk had been cut up and consigned to the silos by the ton. Thousands of bushels of the seed, much like sorghum, had been deposited in the poultry-farm granary. The broom fibres—oft blessed