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The old woman examined it carefully over, smiled to herself, but, like all her people, was too proud to return a word of thanks. One gift to the family always involved another. "Have you any cotton-batting, or black sewing-silk, to give me, to quilt it with?" "No." "Humph!" returned the old dame, in a tone which seemed to contradict my assertion.
And on the way we went down among such wood-piles! whole forests cut up into kindlings and built into solid walls that reached up till the sky looked like a thread of blue sewing-silk between. Tubs like the hold of the Great Eastern, and spouts coming into them like the Staubbach!
"Well, really," she said, "when dear Mr. S preaches those saintly sermons to us about our baptismal vows, and the nobleness of an unworldly life, and calls on us to live for something purer and higher than we are living for, I confess that sometimes all my life seems to me a mere sham, that I am going to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn vows and prayers, all to no purpose; and then I come away and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter about dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons, the next fashion of bonnets, how to make my old dresses answer instead of new, how to keep the air of the world, while in my heart I am cherishing something higher and better.
If a shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a choice button, or a bit of braid or tape, Aunt Esther cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in seeking the key, unlocking the drawer, and searching out in bag or parcel just the treasure demanded. Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect readiness to accommodate others.
I remember a case in point that excited my own wonder at the time, and may not be uninteresting to my readers. When I first received it, it was coiled up in a close roll at the bottom of the bottle, filled with fresh water, that contained it, and looked more like a little tangle of black sewing-silk than anything else.
It is true, there are silk manufactories, like that of the Cheneys in Connecticut, where very pretty foulard dress-silks are made, together with sewing-silk enough to supply a large demand. Enough has been done to show that silks might be made in America; but at present, as compared with Europe, we claim neither silks nor thread laces among our manufactures. "But what then?
'No, no; never mind, said she, putting a skein of crimson sewing-silk over Katherine's outstretched hands, and standing with her back to Helen, who took up her pencil again in silence, and made her black shadows much darker. Elizabeth, who had not been of the walking party, and had thus heard of all the arrangements which had been made that afternoon, went on talking to Katherine.
Hate-evil and Wait-still and Hope-still and Thanks and Unity must have sat together like little doves and made crooked A's and B's and C's and picked out the frayed sewing-silk threads under the reproofs of the teacher of the Infant School, Miss Mather or Miss Coffin or Miss Hooker, whose father was a clergyman, or even Miss Bradford, whose uncle was the Governor?
God of my soul!" she threw a handful of yellow sewing-silk upon a piece of white satin; "Ana shall embroider this gown, the golden poppies of California on a bank of mountain snow." She suddenly seized a case of topaz and a piece of scarlet silk and ran over to me: I being a Montereña, etiquette forbade me to purchase in Santa Barbara. "Thou must have these, my Eustaquia.
The reply seemed to extinguish Bruno's interest. For a moment, as if his thoughts were far elsewhere, he played with a morsel of sewing-silk which he had picked up from the floor. "The Lord is wiser than men," he said at last, as if that were the conclusion to which his unseen thoughts had led him. "Yes; and better," answered the young Jewess. "And better," dreamily repeated the priest.
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