The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1895-09-24
SEND ALL OF THE BOYS.
THE ExPoslTroN WILL BENEFIT
THEMs
Bill Arp Talks of His Experiences in
Raising SILK Worms-Atlanta Has
Been on A Great Strain.

HOtc OtkBCT 6uu DiH 4
ger. The managers have builded
wiser than they knew, and everything
concerning 1t seems to prosper. IL
will be q great show and q great school.
L wish that every youth in this South
ern land who is over ten year OF age
could visit 1t. They would learn more
in q day thar 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 10 study art
is TO see things made by the artist or
the mechanic. L see that a Philadel-
phia silk house will have silk worms
there making their cocoons and will
reel h silk from them and spin and
weave 1t into cloth aud will sell you q
cravat for a song.
/ make mention of this because when
i was q lad my father carried on that
same business OF making silk in
Lawrenceville, Ga, and for three years
bad to pick mulberry leaves in their
season and feed them to the greedy
worms. / had to get up before day
and go to the morus m%ulticaulus Or
chard and pick the leaves while the
dew was on 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 a half inches long we're
kept in one row of hurdles and were
given the coarser leaves smaller ones
were graded down according to age
and the little worms, half an inch long,
had to have the young and tender
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 a 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 worms got
smaller as ne wrapped mis- web around
him, and by the time the cocoon was
done 1t had changed it's shape and
turned into a chrysalis, an ugly
brown thing that had neither. head
nor tail visible. 1t passed into a coma
tose condition for awhile and then
came to life again and cut its way out
OF the cocoon in the shape of a butter
fly or large %fluttering moth and crawl
ed about over the hurdles to find some
place to lay its eggs. These eggs
o Matched out into little silk worms
that went to eating leaves Just like
their greedy ancestors.
But we didn't wait for many to cut
their way out Of the cocoons. We put
them In a pot of hot water and they
stayed comatose all the rest of their
lives. We would have perhaps a
hundred cocoons floating on the top of
the hot water and with u tiny brush
would catch up the delicate Gbers OF
SIX from thirty. to forty cocoons and
make a three d OF all of them together,
n having fastened that thread to a
reel close by we would turn the reel
just like our grandmothers used t.
turn 1t In winding spun truck-turn il
until 1T clicked and then Jake the cut
of and begin again. Just 30 we reeled
The raw silk and kept putting more &C.
coons In the hot water. In this way
we reeled off every bit of the winding
sheet and left the ugly dead ch~rysalis
floating on the water. When they ac.
cumulated so as to be in the way we
skinned them out and threw then
away.
This is only an outline of the b,si.
ness, and [ want the young folks to see
/, how the thing is lone from the tiny
little ogg to the raw silk upon the reel
+ and from there to the loom. NV ia,
ther was a pioneer in the morus multi
caulus craze, as it was called, and
think the only man in Georgia VIII
| made silk and sold it. l remembe,
that one year he sold 5000 worth a,
: n shipment and he sold some othe,
smaller lots. He would have con.
tlnued the business, but his trees took
the die back" or something and he
3 had to give 1t up. 1t was said that the
continued 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 the silk worms. These trees
were grown from cuttings and we be-
gan to strip them the second wear.
when they were about as large as q
broom-handle. They had no branches
a 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 q few ~leavesPat the top. 1t 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. 1 havn't
gotten over that habit yet, but it
hasn't made me wealthy or wise. I
never found out how one worm can get
red silk out of a mulberry leaf and an
other one will get white or yellow.
L heard Capt. Evan Howell make q
speech once and he got eloquent and
humble as he said my friends, we
are helpless and ignorant creatures.
We know moth 'ng h~ardlyabout the mys.
ter1es OF nature that are all around us.
The good book says: Great Is the mys-
terry of ~godliness.' We can't tell why
1t is that when u goose eats grass the
grass turns to feathers and when q
horse eats grass 1t turns to hair and
when q sheep eats grass it turns into
WOOL" And he might have added and
when q worm eats mulberry leaves it
turns TO silk.
The exposition has been a great
strain upon Atlanta, but that town ia
smart and gamey and will make it a
grand success. When the scheme was
first proposed We outsiders never said
anything 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 q financial panic for a little city of
only 100000 people to propose such an
absurd scheme Is perfectly ridiculous.
And to think Of the impudence of
asking for the patronage of the nation
al government and an appropriation.
But the managers kept right on and
have never faltered for o
And they got the Smithsonian institu-
tion and the Liberty bell, and thew se-
riously discussed tho practically of
borrowing the Bartholdf statue OF lib.
erty from New York harbor and put
ting 1t up In Clara Nicer. -,
see that the hotel department Is
ILL -