Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1881-12-12
The Age of HOmespun.


have as yet begun to conceive-one that
is to carry with it complete revolution
of domestic life and social manners. If,
in this transition, there is something to
regret, there is more. | trust, to desire.
If it carries away the old simplicity, it
must also open higher possibilities of
culture and social ornament. The prin-
cipal danger is that, in removing the
rough necessities of the homespun age,
it may take away also the severe virtues
and the homely but deep and true piety
by which, in their blessed fruits, that
age is so honorably distinguished. Be
the issue what it may, good or bad,
hopeful or unhopeful. it has come; it is
already fact, and the consequences
must follow.
Everything that was most distinctive
of the old homespun mode of life will
soon have passed away. The spinning
wheels of wool and flax, that used to
buzz so familiarly in the childish ears of
some of us, will be heard no more for
ever; seen no more, in fact, except in
the halls of the antiquarian societies,
where the delicate daughters will be
asking what these strange machines are,
and how they were made to go? The
huge, hewn-timber looms, that used to
occupy room by themselves in the farm
houses, will be gone, cut up for cord
wood, and their heavy thwack, beating
up the woof, will be heard no more by
the passer-b -by-not even the antiquarian
| halls will find room to harbor speci-
men. The long strips of linen, bleach
ing on the grass, and tended by stur-
dy maiden, sprinkling them, each hour,
| from her water-can, under a broiling
sun thus to prepare the Sunday linen
for her brothers, and her own wedding
out6t-will have disappeared, save as
they return to fill picture in some nov
Ell or ballad of the old time. The ta-
bles will be spread with some cunning
water-power Silesia not yet invented, or
perchance with some meaner fabric from
the cotton mills. The heavy Sunday
coats that grew on sheep individually
remembered-more comfortably carried,
in warm weather, on the ARMAND the
specially fne-striped blue and white
pantaloons of linen just from the loom,
will no longer be conspicuous in process
sions of footmen going to their homespun
worship, but will have given place to
professions of broadcloth gentlemen loll-
ing in the upholstery of their coaches,
able to worship, it may be, in more
cultivated figure, but not with a finer
sincerity. The churches, too, that used
to be simple meeting-houses covered
with rived clapboards of oak, will have
come down, mostly from the bleak hill
tops in the close villages and populous
towns that crowd the waterfalls and the
railroads; and the old burial places,
where the fathers sleep, will be left to
their lonely altitude-token, shall we
say, of an age that lived as much nearer
to heaven and as much less under the
world. The change will be complete
Would that we might raise some worthy
monument to social state, then to be
passed by, worthy. in all future time, to
be held in the dearest reverence.
1t may have seemed extravagant OIL
fantastic, that should think to give /;
character of the century now past, under
the one article of homespun. 1t GER
tainly is not the only, or in itself tn,
chief article Of distinction and yet W,
shall find it to be distinction that rum
through all others, and gives a color t.
the whole economy of life and character
in the times of which we speak.
[ Thus, if the clothing is to be manu-
, factured in the house, then fax will b
grown IN the plowed land, and shee]
: will be raised in the pasture, and tn
number of the flock will correspond wit
the measure of the house market-th
number of the sons and daughters to b
. clothed-so that the agriculture ou
l doors will match the family in doors
Then as there is no thought of obtainin
the articles of clothing, or dress, by ex
, change; as there is little passing Q
money, and the habit of exchange
feebly developed; the family will be fe
: on homegrown products, buckwheat
) maize, rye, or whatever the soil vii
yield. And as carriages are luxurie
= introduced only with exchanges, tn
lads will be going back and forth to th
mill on horseback, astride the fres
:, grists, to keep the mouths in supply
' The meat market will be equally domes
: tic. kind of quartermaster slaughte
: and supply, laid up in the cellar, at {
!; times in the year. The daughters tha
5 in factory days, would go abroad to joi
the female conscription eff the cotto
' mill, will be kept in the home factory
s or in that of some other family, and S
i in the retreats of domestic life. And s
y it will be seen that form of life whic
= includes almost every point of econom,