In northern India every Hindu must have a shawl; it is as necessary to him as a hat or a pair of boots to a citizen of Chicago or New York, and it is customary to invest a considerable part of the family fortune in shawls.  They are handed down from generation to generation, for they never wear out; the older they are the more valuable they are considered.  You often see a barefooted, bare-legged peasant with his head wrapped in a Cashmere shawl that would bring a thousand dollars in a London auction-room.  It is considered absolutely essential for every young man to wear one of those beautiful fabrics, and if there is none for him in the family he saves his earnings and scrimps and borrows and begs from his relations until he gets enough money together to buy one.  Most of the shawls are of the Persian pattern familiar to us.  The groundwork is a solid color (white and yellow seem to be the most popular), and there are a good many of blue, green, orange and pink.  A crowd of Hindus in this part of the country suggest a kaleidoscope as they move about with their brilliant colored shawls upon their shoulders.

The amount and fineness of embroidery upon the border and in the corners of shawls give them their value, and sometimes there is an elaborate design in the center.  The shawl itself is so fine that it can be drawn through a finger ring or folded up and stowed away in an ordinary pocket, but it has the warmth of a Scotch blanket.  Shawls are woven and embroidered in the homes of the people of Cashmere, and are entirely of hand work.  There are no factories and no steam looms, and every stitch of the decoration is made with an ordinary needle by the fingers of a man.  Women do not seem to have acquired the accomplishment.

A great deal of fun used to be made at the expense of Queen Victoria, who was in the habit of sending a Cashmere shawl whenever she was expected to make a wedding present, and no doubt it was rather unusual for her to persist in forcing unfashionable garments upon her friends.  But there is another way of looking at it.  The good queen was deeply interested in promoting the native industries of India, and bought a large number of shawls every year from the best artists in Cashmere.  Up there shawl-makers have reputations like painters and orators with us, and if you would ask the question in Cashmere any merchant would give you the names of the most celebrated weavers and embroiderers.  Queen Victoria was their most regular and generous patron.  She not only purchased large numbers of shawls herself, but did her best to bring them into fashion, both because she believed it was a sensible practice, and would advance the prosperity of the heathen subjects in whom she took such a deep interest.