The preparation of flax was infinitely more tedious and more complicated. From the time the tender plant springs up, through pulling, spreading, drying, rippling, stacking, rotting, cleaning, braking, swingling, beetling, ruffling, hetchelling, spreading, and drawing, there are in all over twenty dexterous manipulations till the flax is ready for the wheel, the most skilful manipulation of all, and is wrapped round the spindle. Flax thread was spun on the small flax-wheel. “Lint on the wee wheel, woo’ on the muckle.” It was reeled into skeins on a clock-reel, which ticked when the requisite number had been wound, when the spinner stopped and tied the skein. A quaint old ballad has the refrain: “And he kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked.” These knots of linen thread had to be bleached before they were woven. They were soaked in water for days, and constantly wrung out; they were washed again and again in the brook; they were “bucked” with ashes and hot water in a bucking-tub; they were seethed, soaked, rinsed, dried, and wound on bobbins and quills for the loom. In spite of all this bleaching, the linen web, when woven, would not be white, and it afterward went through twoscore more processes of bucking, possing, rinsing, drying, and grassing. In all, forty bleaching manipulations were necessary for “light linens.” Thus, at least, sixteen months had passed since the flax-seed had been sown, during which the good-wife had not “eaten the bread of idleness.” With the passing of these old-time household arts of spinning and weaving, went also the household independence. Well timed was our struggle for freedom from British rule, when every man and wife on their own farm held everything necessary for life and comfort--food, shelter, fuel, illumination, clothing. What need had he or she to fear any king? It could not be such an independent revolt to-day; in the matter of clothing alone, no family could be independent of outside assistance. The old-time preparatory work of the weaver is much simplified for this Narragansett weaver in modern times, by the use of machine-spun threads and yarns. The warp of these bed coverlets is of strong twine or thread, while the weft is of various woollen yarns or zephyrs or crewels, bought at mills. These latter are aniline-dyed, and in no artistic sense equal the old indigo, hickory, sassafras, or madder home-dyed wools of yore. These skeins of yarn are prepared for use by spreading them on a reel or swifts, and winding the yarn off on quills in a quilling-wheel, which is somewhat like a simplified spinning-wheel.