The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-09
os ANGELES, Cal, June 2.-In his

1z the Inatchless architectural skill, the patience, industry and wisdom of the spider a material as well as spiritual lesson. The text is Proverbs XXX, 2S, 'sThe spider taketh hold with her hands and is in kings palaces"
 Have you ever been through any of the famous royal palaces of Europe? Have you ever had a guide take you through Windsor castle, where the English king and queen live, or through the Tuileries and Versailles, where the French rulers have lived. through Peterhof, built by Peter the Great where the Russian crowned heads lived, or through the Qurinal, where the Italian rulers live, or Unterthrough the imperial palaces flank ing Unter den Linden, where the Elm peror of Germany and the members of the Hohenzollern family live? These pal aces are something more than domiciles for kings and queens and princes and princesses. They are treasures of art and literature. They contain great art gal 1 leries and museums. They are great It. braries They are filled with priceless historical relics. And they are built in the midst of beautiful gardens where the tossing, tumbling fountains have myriads of rainbows reflected from their falling waters by day and where the statues carved by the greatest of sculptors and the most exquisite of flowers are re- vealed to the guests by the many lights by night which make the midnight as light as the midday
 King Solomon's palaces were the best examples of architectural beauty of his time. Thus when Solomon was using In my text the symbol of the kings palace he was practically saying: '"The kings palace is a treasure house. There come the greatest of architect and most won l derful of sculptors to work their skill 'n | stone There come the finest artists to paint their pictures. There come the ma 1 gicians of the loom to bring their offer ings of Damascene rugs and their most 1 exquisite tapestries. There come the most wonderful horticulturists to lay out their gardens. All that wealth and beauty and human power can give is to be round in the kings palaces"
 One morning early King Solomon is walking through the rooms of his palace. Suddenly he stops and begins to study something very carefully. It is spiders web. During the night the spider has crawled into the honse and swung sus- pension bridge and there gone to work. V himself from the ceiling and climbed up from the window sillS He knotted his thread here and spun his network there. Then a servant comes into the room and with a broom he is about to brush this spiders web away "Leave it alone,' Solomon says: 'I never studied one be- fore How marvellous is the workman ship of this silSen web! Why, in all the splendors of my palace there is not greater wonder than this spiders web" | Then King Solomon takes out his note book and writes down the words of my text "The spider taketh hold with her hands and Is in kings palaces" If the wisest of all men could afford to study the spider building her web, surely we | have a right to make a sermon upon the life's work of a royal spider.
 A Royal Occupation.
 In the first place, the spider has a royal occupation. She is a threadmaker, a weaver, a spinner She has the faculty of producing a thread inside of her own body and drawing it out the only living creature which has the ability to con- struct with that thread those wonder fully designed webs which are seen In the houses and barns on the roads, in the grasses and trees every summer morning before the dews have evaporated under the rising sun The silSworm may be able to spin a cocoon. but the spider does more than that. The spider has the l power to stand upon the branch of tree and emit from her body thread; l then as this thread grows longer and 1 longer 1t Is carried backward and for ward by the winds until it touches an other branch, where 1t is anchored. Then the spider. having connected the two branches by this single thread, as an ar chitect bridges the sides of river by cable strand goes above that strand and drops down and goes below that strand and climbs up and winds around and around and around in circles after she has united her main threads until she finishes the web. Never did human weaver do such symmetrical and deli cately designed work as does the spider.
 This work of the spider in King Solo mons time was the more marvellous be- cause it was like the human weaving of that time, only more rapid. Then all the weaving was done by hand and in the most primitive style. If a woman wished to make garment, in the beginning she had to make her own thread. She would take a handful of wool and stretch It out into a strand about two yards long Then she would attach bobbin to that strand and spin 1t round and round. Then after she had twisted that strand into a thread, she would wind it up and stretch out another strand of wool and spin 1t into a thread. She made each thread alone. It took the woman in old en times as long to make one thread as 1t does now for a bobbin boy in one of our factories to make four hundred threads. Then she would stretch the warp threads perpendicularly up and down. Then with her own hands she would put in the filings, winding them horizontally in and out until the cloth was made. Thus it was a weary, tedious task to make piece of cloth in olden times. While the woman's work would occupy days and weeks. it would take spider only few hours to spin her web. Thus King Solo, mon was comparing the making of a spiders web to the old fashioned, prm- itive ways in which the women of his time wove the garments for their hus- bands and brothers and sons and fathers.
 A Royal Weaver.
 But, though the weaving of the gar ments in olden times was considered one of the most tedious of tasks, yet it was looked upon by all true women as one of the noblest of occupations No true princess, no true queen in a royal palace, was too high or too rich to perform this duty for her men folks. In the last chap ter of Proverbs an oriental queen gives a description of a perfect woman. have | always believed that description was a flial picture of her own mother. What does the royal author say:? "She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her hands," This means that the queen and her women made the garments that her husband wore to battle and to his l<ingly receptions. And she was not the only royal pe-sOnage who boatsted that