Dora.  I never did think about it.

L. Nor you, Sibyl?

Sibyl.  No; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there.

L. Yes, but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do mean something.  Wife means “weaver”.  You have all the right to call yourselves little “housewives,” when you sew neatly.

Dora.  But I don t think we want to call ourselves ’little housewives’.

L. You must either be house-wives, or house-moths; remember that.  In the deep sense, you must either weave men’s fortunes, and embroider them, or feed upon, and bring them to decay.  You had better let me keep my sewing illustration, and help me out with it.

Dora.  Well, we’ll hear it, under protest.

L. You have heard it before, but with reference to other matters.  When it is said, “no man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else it taketh from the old,” does it not mean that the new piece tears the old one away at the sewn edge?

Dora.  Yes; certainly.

L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, does not the whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears again?

Dora.  Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more.

L. Well, the rocks don’t seem to think that:  but the same thing happens to them continually.  I told you they were full of rents, or veins.  Large masses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and of veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack or cleft).  Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the strongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled with into fibers, which cross from one side of it to the other, and are partly crystalline; so that, when the crystals become distinct, the fissure has often exactly the look of a tear, brought together with strong cross stitches.  Now when this is completely done, and all has been fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again.  Then the old vein must open wider; or else another open elsewhere.  If the old vein widen, it may do so at its center; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins, that the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein, instead, are torn away by them:  and another little supplementary vein—­often three or four successively—­will be thus formed at the side of the first.

Mary.  That is really very much like our work.  But what do the mountains use to sew with?

L. Quartz, whenever they can get it:  pure limestones are obliged to be content with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find some quartz for themselves.  Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet:  it looks merely like dry dark mud; you could not think there was any quartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with beautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that you can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposed to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown:  and, more than that, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this way and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein as it widened.