If there were at that time any woolen manufactories in the United States, their powers of production must have been very limited, while foreign cloths could only have been worn by the gentlemen, and by them probably not at all times, for a few years later than the date of madam’s diary we find that English cloths were sold at the then fearful prices of eighteen and twenty dollars per yard.  So sheep must be kept and sheared, and their wool carded, rolled and spun.  As linen-spinning was the fancy-work of winter, so wool-spinning was that of summer.  Back and forth before the loud-humming big wheel briskly stepped the cheerful spinner through the long bright afternoons of summer, busily spinning the yarn that was to be woven into cloths and flannels of different textures.  Busily indeed must both mistress and maids have stepped, for not without their labors could be provided the coats and trousers, the undershirts, the petticoats and the woolen sheets, to say nothing of blankets, white or chequered, and the heavy coverlets of blue or green and white yarns woven into curiously intermingling figures, all composed of little squares; and last, but not least, the yarn for countless pairs of long warm stockings for the feet of master and man, mistress and maid.  For as a legacy from dying slavery the servants were still unable or unwilling to provide for their own wants, and the house-mistress had frequently to knit Jack’s stockings with her own fair fingers, as well as to “cut out the stuff for Jim’s pantaloons,” which she will “try to teach Silvy to sew.”

Did we think that we had reached the last purpose for which the homespun woolen yarn was required?  We were mistaken, for here is the entry:  “To-day dyed the yarn for back-hall carpet.  Remember to tell the weaver that I prefer it plaided instead of striped.”

Economy of time must, one would think, have been the most necessary of economies to the old-time housewives.  With so many things to do, how did they find time to make those marvels of misplaced industry, the patched bed-quilts?  Our diarist, rich as her closets were in blankets and linen, left but few bed-quilts to vex the eyes of her descendants, yet we read that “Betsey and I quilted a bed-quilt this afternoon”—­their fingers were surely nimble—­“and in the evening”—­happy change of employment!—­“Betsey finished reading aloud from Blair’s Lectures. To-morrow evening we shall begin the Spectator.  My husband has sent us by private hand Mr. A. Pope’s translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, but it has not yet arrived.  Strange that a private hand should be slower than the post!”

And indeed the slowness of the post had been a source of frequent disquietude to our madam during this lonely winter, for very lonely it was to the waiting wife and mother, notwithstanding all her occupations.  “‘Life’s employments are life’s enjoyments,’” she sadly writes on the night before Christmas, “and surely I have not a few of them; but with my beloved husband and son far from me I cannot half enjoy my life.  I have given the servants their presents to-night” (though living in Puritan Connecticut, our madam was of Hollandish stock, and did not ignore the Christmas festival), “and paid them eighteen pence apiece not to wish me a Merry Christmas to-morrow, for little merriment indeed should there be for me.”