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Updated: June 28, 2025
Up and across another mighty hall, and then up again, and into a great women's-room, full of looms and spinning-wheels, where a buxom English housewife and half-a-dozen red-cheeked maids were gaping over their distaffs at the tale a jolly old monk was telling between swallows of wine.
Pastoureau, one of those whom the persecution of the Huguenots by the French king had brought over to this country. With this old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas. He remembered to have lived in another place a short time before, near to London too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of Frenchmen.
And the rain continued to drip...drip...drip, monotonously. The announcement that the railway was to be built in the spring caused a great stir in the village. The strangers who went about buying land from the peasants were the sole topic of conversation at the spinning-wheels on winter evenings.
In 1810, according to Tench Coxe's semi-official Statement of Arts and Manufactures, the value of the textile products of North Carolina was greater than that of Massachusetts. Every farmhouse had spinning-wheels and one loom or several on which the women of the family spun yarn and wove cloth for the family wardrobe.
Growing bolder, he tried some of the doors and found them to yield, letting him into a kind of smothered, troubled quietness even more oppressive than that outside. He passed an empty ropewalk, the hemp strewn untidily about, as if the workers had left hurriedly. He peered curiously at idle looms and deserted spinning-wheels deserted apparently but the instant before he came.
There was no light as yet but that of the moon in the parlour; the spinning-wheels too were silent; for stories were being told; one more marvellous than the other, of ghosts and goblins, of dwarfs and mountain-spirits, and naturally enough awful tales of the neighbouring nixy King, and of his three daughters who lived in the enchanted lake.
The old attic was a favorite meeting-place for the V, who held high carnival there, now racing up and down the great floor and hiding in dark corners behind aged chests and spinning-wheels, now robing themselves in the time-honored garments which had done duty for various ancestors of the Hapgood family, and exchanging visits of mock ceremony, or inviting Mrs.
Talking was not allowed from any one until the children's lessons were learned, and not greatly indulged in then. Later in the day, after the dairy had been visited and the kitchen inspected, the spinning-wheels were brought out, and the maids, who had finished their household and dairy work, were set down to spin.
"And so indeed it is," she replied; "and, poor things, sure if their sweethearts do come at the dusk to help them to carry home their spinning-wheels, who can be angry with them? It's the way of life, sure, and of the world."
The colonial gentleman had to have his soap-kettles and candle-molds and looms and smokehouses and salting-tubs and spinning-wheels and other industrial machines operated for him by somebody, if he was going to get his food and clothes and other necessaries cheap. He lost money if he wasn't domestic. He was domestic.
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