ceased to exist.

Up to the beginning of the present century, poor women found profitable
employment in spinning flax or wool. This was a better occupation for
them than straw plaiting, inasmuch as it was carried on at the family
hearth, and did not admit of gadding and gossiping about the village. The
implement used was a long narrow machine of wood, raised on legs,
furnished at one end with a large wheel, and at the other with a spindle
on which the flax or wool was loosely wrapped, connected together by a
loop of string. One hand turned the wheel, while the other formed the
thread. The outstretched arms, the advanced foot, the sway of the whole
figure backwards and forwards, produced picturesque attitudes, and
displayed whatever of grace or beauty the work-woman might possess. {41}
Some ladies were fond of spinning, but they worked in a quieter manner,
sitting at a neat little machine of varnished wood, like Tunbridge ware,
generally turned by the foot, with a basin of water at hand to supply the
moisture required for forming the thread, which the cottager took by a
more direct and natural process from her own mouth. I remember two such
elegant little wheels in our own family.

It may be observed that this hand-spinning is the most primitive of
female accomplishments, and can be traced back to the earliest times.
Ballad poetry and fairy tales are full of allusions to it. The term
'spinster' still testifies to its having been the ordinary employment of
the English young woman. It was the labour assigned to the ejected nuns
by the rough earl who said, 'Go spin, ye jades, go spin.' It was the
employment at which Roman matrons and Grecian princesses presided amongst
their handmaids. Heathen mythology celebrated it in the three Fates
spinning and measuring out the thread of human life. Holy Scripture
honours it in those 'wise-hearted women' who 'did spin with their hands,