home spun. In my early youth our house linen and our summer shirts and
trousers were made from flax that grew on the farm. Those pioneer
shirts, how vividly I remember them! They dated from the stump, and bits
of the stump in the shape of "shives" were inwoven in their texture and
made the wearer of them an unwilling penitent for weeks, or until use
and the washboard had subdued them. Peas in your shoes are no worse than
"shives" on your shirt. But those tow shirts stood by you. If you lost
your hold in climbing a tree and caught on a limb your shirt or your
linen trousers would hold you. The stuff from which they were made had a
history behind it--pulled up by the roots, rooted on the ground, broken
with a crackle, flogged with a swingle, and drawn through a hetchel, and
out of all this ordeal came the flax. How clearly I remember Father
working with it in the bright, sharp March days, breaking it, then
swingling it with a long wooden sword-like tool over the end of an
upright board fixed at the base in a heavy block. This was to separate
the brittle fragments of the bark from the fibres of the flax. Then in
large handfuls he drew it through the hetchel--an instrument with a
score or more long sharp iron teeth, set in a board, row behind row.
This combed out the tow and other worthless material. It was a mighty
good discipline for the flax; it straightened out its fibres and made it
as clear and straight as a girl's tresses. Out of the tow we twisted bag
strings, flail strings, and other strings. With the worthless portions
we made huge bonfires. The flax, Mother would mass upon her distaff and
spin into threads. The last I saw of the old crackle, fifty or more
years ago, it served as a hen roost under the shed, and the savage old
hetchel was doing duty behind the old churner when he sulked and pulled
back so as to stop the churning machine. It was hetcheling wool then
instead of flax. The flax was spun on a quill which ran by the foot and
the quills or spools holding the thread were used in a shuttle when the
cloth was woven. The old loom stood in the hog-pen chamber, and there