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The Spinners by Eden Phillpotts
page 71 of 568 (12%)
A WALK


The Carding Machine was a squat and noisy monster. Mr. Best confessed
that it had put him in mind of a passage from Holy Writ, for it seemed
to be all eyes, behind and before. The eyes were wheels, and beneath,
the mass of the carder opened its mouth--a thin and hungry slit into
which wound an endless band. Spread upon this leathern roller was the
hemp tow--that mass of short material which Levi Baggs, the hackler,
pruned away from his long strides. As for the minder, Sally Groves, she
seemed built and born to tend a Carding Machine. She moved with dignity
despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to
foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as
another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither
elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of
skill, resolution and good sense. The great woman ennobled her work;
through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered,
and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon
the rolling board. One of less experience might have needed to weigh her
material, but Sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment,
she produced sliver of even texture.

The carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies. It glimmered all
over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly
through systems of fast and slow wheels. Between them the material was
lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by
thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the
stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again. Despite the
thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail
material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card. Any real
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