Have you ever seen a loom? It would not be a wonder if you have not. In these days the average person seldom sees one. Everyone knows in a vague sort of way that clothes and carpets are made of wool or silk or cotton, as the case may be, and that they are woven upon an instrument called a loom. This is about as much as we usually know about the clothes we wear or the carpets we walk upon. We buy these things from the store and that is all there is to it. In the olden times, and not so very long ago either, everybody knew something about weaving, at least every girl and woman knew something of the art, and a loom was as familiar an object in the household then as a sewing machine is now. Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaff spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping loom, whose noisy shuttle within doors Mingled their sounds with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens. This picture of home life in Acadia two hundred years ago would have served as a picture of home life almost everywhere in the civilized world. From the beginning of history until modern times most of the weaving was done by the women in the home. The earliest practical weaver on record is the spider and it may be that man learned his first lesson in weaving from this skilled little workman (Fig. 1); or the beautiful nest of the weaver-bird may have given to human beings the first hints in the weaving art. Whoever may have been his teacher, it is certain that man learned how to weave in the earliest stages of existence. It is thought that his first effort in this direction consisted in making cages for animals and wiers (traps) for catching fish (Fig. 2) by interlacing vines or canes or slender boughs. The next step was taken when women began to make baskets and cradles and mats by interlacing long slender strips of wood (Fig. 3). [Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE FIRST LESSON IN WEAVING.] [Illustration: FIG. 2.--A WIER TRAP OF THE VIRGINIA INDIANS.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.--PRIMITIVE BASKET MAKING.] [Illustration: FIG. 4.--THE PRIMITIVE LOOM.] Basket weaving led to cloth weaving, and this led to the loom. In Figure 4 we see the simplest and oldest form of the loom. It consisted of a single stick (yarn beam) of wood about four feet long. This was the first form of the loom--just a straight stick of wood and nothing more. From the stick the threads which run lengthwise in the cloth were suspended. These threads are known as the _warp_. The threads which run breadthwise in the cloth are known as the _weft_, or _woof_. As the woman's deft fingers pass along with the weft she carries the thread over the first warp thread, under the second, over the third, under the fourth, and so on. Here we have not only the simplest form of the loom but the simplest kind of cloth. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--THE PUEBLO LOOM.] [Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE HEDDLE.]