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My sempstress, who had procured some young needlewomen to sew my shirts, had expected that I would fall in love with one and not with all, but my amorous zeal overstepped her hopes, and all the pretty ones had their turn; they were all well satisfied with me, and the sempstress was rewarded for her good offices.
The sewing-machine, hailed as a blessing, has proved a curse to the poor; for it takes away profits from needlewomen, while employers testify that women who use this machine for steady work, in two years or less become hopelessly diseased and can rear no children. Thus it is that the controlling political majority of New-England is passing from the educated to the children of ignorant foreigners.
Some of them are doing it as aunts or maiden sisters; some as teachers; some are only humble needlewomen; some are servants in other people's kitchens or nurseries women who would be spoken of by the pitying or slighting name of `old maid, who are yet more worthy of respect for the work they are doing, and for the influence they are exerting, than many a married woman in her sphere.
One form of merry-making which was in high favor among the women of that day was the quilting-bee. These quilters of the long ago must have been accomplished needlewomen, as evidenced by the heirlooms in "diamond," "rose," "basket," and other quaint designs which have descended to us from our great-grandmothers.
One may be too careful in gradating the tints: timidity in this respect prevails too much among modern needlewomen: an artist in floss should not want her work to look like a gradated wash of colour. When laid floss is kept in place by threads themselves sewn down across it, such threads are called "couched," and the work itself may be described as laid and couched.
The contributor, revolving the facts vaguely in his mind, was not sure, after all, that it was not the man's clothes rather than his expression that softened him toward the rugged visage: they were so tragically cheap, and the misery of helpless needlewomen, and the poverty and ignorance of the purchaser, were so apparent in their shabby newness, of which they appeared still conscious enough to have led the way to the very window, in the Semitic quarter of the city, where they had lain ticketed, "This nobby suit for $15."
She had lived in Whitechapel for several years, but her work lay mostly in the West End. She belonged to the old-fashioned order of needlewomen. She could do the most perfect work with that right hand which was so soon to be useless.
Here is a man working in wood or bone with the ingenious tools they have evolved; here are women working in skin or fur, and some of them are admirable needlewomen; here, perhaps, is another woman chewing mukluks and many a white man who has kept his feet dry in overflow water is grateful to the teeth that do not disdain this most effective way of securing an intimate union between sole and upper.
Her branch of the Associated Charities is in Laurel Street, not far from our house, you know; and the very day after our last meeting I posted off to get my 'chore. I expected to have to fit work for poor needlewomen, or go to see some dreadful sick creature, or wash dirty little Pats, and was bracing up my mind for whatever might come, as I toiled up the hill in a gale of wind.
They were good needlewomen by inheritance and sensitive to art influences by nature, and the initiative capacity which belongs to power and feeling enabled them at once to seize upon this mode of expression and make it their own.
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