The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1895-09-18
BILL ARP'S LETTER.
Arp Hopes That all of Them Will Get to
the Exposition.
atlanta Constitution.

wiser than they know, and everything
concerning it seems to prosper. 1t
will be great show and great
school. wish that every youth in
this southern land who is over ten
years of age could visit it. They
could learn more in a day than they
can learn in a year from books. The
sight is the very best receptive of
knowledge. The best way to study
geography is to travel, and the best
way to study art is to see things made
by the artist or the mechanic. | see
that Philadelphia silk house will
have silk worms there making their
cocoons and will reel the silk from
them and spin and weave it into cloth
and they will sell you cravat for
song.
I make mention of this because
when I was lad my father carried on
that same business of making silk in
Lawrenceville, Ca, and for three years
I had to pick mulberry leaves in their
season and feed them to the greedy
worms. I had to get up before day
and 20 to the morus multicaulus Or
chard and pick the leaves while the
dew was on them and carry them in
sacks to the silk house and scatter
them all over the hurdles and the
greedy worms would eat them all up
before breakfast. The big worms that
were two to two and half inches
long were kept in one row of hurdles
and were given the coarser leaves
smaller ones were graded down to age
and the little worms, half an inch
long, had to have the young and ten
der leaves. When the worms were
full grown and had devoured till they
had stuffed themselves with mulberry
fiber they settled down to business
and spun their winding sheet in the
shape of a cocoon. These cocoons
were beautiful little things, about as
large as pecan nut and of the same
shape. They were Of different colors.
Some were pure white, some green,
some pink, some red, some yellow and
all were bright and glossy. The worm
got smaller as he wrapped his web
around him, and by the time the CO.
coon was done it had changed its
shape and turned into chrysalis, an
ugly brown thing that had neither
head nor tail visible. 1t passed into
a comatose condition for awhile and
then came to life again and cut its
way out Of the cocoon in the shape of
a butterfly or large huttering moth and
crawled about over the hurdles to find
some place to lay it's eggs. These
eggs soon Matched out into little silk
worms that went to eating leaves just
like their greedy ancestors.
But we dident wait for many to cut
their way out Of the cocoons. We
put them in pot Of hot water and
they staid comatose all the rest Of
their lives. We would have perhaps
hundred cocoons floating on the top
of the hot water and with tiny brush
would catch up the delicate fbers C."
silk from thirty or forty cocoons and
make thread of all of them together,
and having fastened that thread to a
reel close by we would turn the reel
just like our grandmotbers used to
turn it in winding spun truck-turn
it until it clicked and then take the
cut off and begin again. Just so, we
reeled the raw silk and kept putting
more cocoons in the hot water. In
this way we reeled off every bit of the
winding sheet and left the ugly dead
chrysalis floating on the water. When
they accumulated so as to be in the
way we skinned them out and threw
them away.
This is only an outline Of the bust
ness, and I want the young folks to
see how the thing is done from the
tiny little egg to the raw silk upon
the reel and from there to the loom.
My father was a pioneer in the morus
multicaulus craze, as it was called,
and / think the only man in Georgia
who made silk and sold it. [ remem-
Der that one year he sold $500 worth
at one shipment and he sold some
othek smaller lots. He would have
continued the business but his trees
took the "die back" or something and
he had to give it up. 1t is said that
the continual stripping Of the leaves
will kill them in about three years,
for the leaves are the lungs Of plants
and they can't keep on making new
lungs just to please silk worms. These
trees were grown from cuttings and
we began to strip them the second
year, when they were about as large
as broom handle. They had no
branches and were about as far apart
as young apple trees in a nursery.
We stripped them like pulling fodder,
coming down with both hands and
leaving only few leaves at the top.
It would have been good fun if it had
not been so monotonous and required
so much of Ben Franklin's advice
about "early to bed and early to rise,
etc. [ haven't gotten over that habit
yet, but it hasent made me wealthy or
wise. I never have found out how
one worm can get red silk out Of
mulberry leaf and another one will
get white or yellow.
I heard Captain Evan Howell make
a speech once and he go' eloquent and
humble as he said My friends we
are helpless and ignorant creatures.
We know nothing hardly about the
mysteries Of nature that are all around
us. The good book says Great is
the mystery of godlincss. We can't
tell why it is that when goose eats
grass the grass turns to feathers and
when a horse eats grass it turns to
hair and when a sheep eats grass it
turns to wool" And he might have
added that when a worm eats mulberry
leaves it turns to silk.
The exposition has been great
strain upon Atlanta, but that town is
smart and gamey and will make it
grand success. When the scheme was
first proposed we outsiders never said
to discourage it, but we
smiled and whispered was there ever
such cheek. Right after the great
Chicago fair and right in the middle
of financial panic for little city of
only 100000 people to propose such