"Few have ever seen a woman hatchel flax or card tow, or heard the buzzing of the foot-wheel, or seen bunches of flaxen yarn hanging in the kitchen, or linen cloth whitening on the grass. The flax-dresser with the shives, fibres, and dirt of flax covering his garments, and his face begrimed with flax-dirt has disappeared; the noise of his brake and swingling knife has ended, and the boys no longer make bonfires of his swingling tow. The sound of the spinning-wheel, the song of the spinster, and the snapping of the clock-reel all have ceased; the warping bars and quill wheel are gone, and the thwack of the loom is heard only in the factory. The spinning woman of King Lemuel cannot be found."
Frequent references are made to flax in the Bible, notably in the Book of Proverbs; and the methods of growing and preparing flax by the ancient Egyptians were precisely the same as those of the American colonist a hundred years ago, of the Finn, Lapp, Norwegian, and Belgian flax-growers to-day. This ancient skill was not confined to flax-working. Rosselini, the eminent hierologist, says that every modern craftsman may see on Egyptian monuments four thousand years old, representations of the process of his craft just as it is carried on to-day. The paintings in the Grotto of El Kab, shown in Hamilton's _Ægyptica_, show the pulling, stocking, tying, and rippling of flax going on just as it is done in Egypt now. The four-tooth ripple of the Egyptian is improved upon, but it is the same implement. Pliny gives an account of the mode of preparing flax: plucking it up by the roots, tying it in bundles, drying, watering, beating, and hackling it, or, as he says, "combing it with iron hooks." Until the Christian era linen was almost the only kind of clothing used in Egypt, and the teeming banks of the Nile furnished flax in abundance. The quality of the linen can be seen in the bands preserved on mummies. It was not, however, spun on a wheel, but on a hand-distaff, called sometimes a rock, on which the women in India still spin the very fine thread which is employed in making India muslins. The distaff was used in our colonies; it was ordered that children and others tending sheep or cattle in the fields should also "be set to some other employment withal, such as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weaving tape, etc." I heard recently a distinguished historian refer in a lecture to this colonial statute, and he spoke of the children _sitting upon a rock_ while knitting or spinning, etc., evidently knowing naught of the proper signification of the word.