Spinning lies at the threshold of human culture. It was the first or among the first born of the arts, and was doubtless the offspring of woman's ingenuity. Through all the past ages it was within the peculiar province of the sex. In it queens and even goddesses sought to excel; one of the earliest of useful efforts, it was one of the best; till it was introduced, man was a houseless wanderer, and where it is unknown, he is still a vagabond, roaming the forest. Home and its softening and soothing influences had no existence, till woman began to twirl the spindle. Till then the fount of the arts was unopened, unthought of, undreamt of. A universal acquirement, it is one in which little variation in details could be looked for among uncultivated tribes. It is, however, singular, that the thread-making idea has been less skilfully developed by the red race than perhaps any other of their mechanical conceptions. This is a striking fact, in peoples so far advanced as were the Mexicans, Peruvians, and others. The distaff has been identified with spinning in the eastern world from the earliest times. It dates far behind historic and was a common thing in heroic epochs. It pervades the most ancient legends, and plays a part in the remotest myths. No other instrument of domestic economy is seen through the semi-historic clouds that are about the infancy of human progress; few others could be named as belonging to lower strata of time. Common in the other hemisphere through unknown periods, it was utterly a stranger in this. Of the offices assigned to the fates, that of Clotho was to hold the distaff, while Lachesis twirled the spindle, and Atropos determined the length of the thread. Then there was Hercules, who was playfully rapped over the head by Omphale, for his awkwardness in this service. Sardanapalus, too, endeavored to rival the son of Jupiter, by spinning among his maids. Ancient Egyptian spindles and distaffs have been recovered from the tombs; and how common they both were among the Hebrews appears in Solomon's portrait of a virtuous woman: "She seeketh wool and flax--she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Both spindle and distaff were frequently dedicated to Minerva, the patroness of spinning and of the arts connected with it. The goddess was herself rudely sculptured with them in the Trojan Palladium. A glance at these classic implements, before introducing the primitive American apparatus, will better enable us to perceive the differences existing between them, more correctly to appreciate both, and to judge how far one is allied to or could have been derived from the other. [Illustration: Distaff and Spindle--Ancient Greek and Roman.]