In the ‘good old days’ before the invention of the spinning-jenny and the steam-engine, when working-men were slaves, and the rich had not the luxuries they have now, spinning was the work of the mistress of the house. Many good stories begin with an account of a fair maiden at a spinning-wheel, and a very ancient rhyme refers to the days ‘when Adam delved and Eve span.’ When a young lady was growing of a marriageable age, in the days of the spinning-wheel, she made preparation for her nuptials by spinning the material for sheets, tablecloths, napkins, and all manner of household necessaries; hence she was called a ‘spinster.’ Words change in their meanings with the changing fashions of a changeful world. There is one class of spinners, however, to which the whir of the loom and the steam-engine has made but little difference. ‘Men may come, and men may go, but _they_ go on for ever.’ All the changes of our complex civilisation make but little difference to these little spinners. They live in their dark little houses; spin their threads; live their lives; die in peace, or else get eaten up, and pass off the scene, making no fuss, seeking no honour. Some people call them mussels; scientific naturalists call them _Mytilus edulis_. They deserve a good name, for they are an ancient and honourable family, that have fought a good fight in the fierce battle of life, and have endured through long ages, while many others have perished. Every one who has visited the seashore must have noticed at times a little mussel forming the centre of a tangled mass of threads, shells, stones, and all sorts of fragments. These are bound together by the labour of the black-shelled spinster. Instead of anchoring to a rock, as a well-behaved little mussel ought to have done, this one has gone off and anchored to all sorts of rubbish, and been driven and tossed by the waves of the sea in all directions, until it has formed the centre of the tangled mass we find on the beach. In the natural way, a mussel settles between high and low water mark. When covered by the tide, he opens his doors, and angles for a living with his wonderful fishing-apparatus, for the spinsters of the sea are all born fishermen. When the tide is going out, the little angler closes the valves of his house as tight as a steel safe, and keeps his mouth shut, with a lot of water inside, until the tide covers him again.