Inestimable to women is the value of such occupation! For them the curse has been transmuted into a golden blessing. There could have been no necessity for Mary and Martha Washington to employ themselves so diligently in sewing and knitting. The hands were numerous enough around them among the negroes and humbler classes for all such work. But they held an old-fashioned creed: that the human hand--that wonderful mechanism--was created for some useful purpose! In their day the hand had not claimed for its beauty the cunning skill of the "artist manicure." The instructed hand made laces, and manipulated the spinet and harp, but it made garments as well. Let none call the love of needlework useless--its results not worth the while! Knitting may not be the highest use for one's beautiful hands, but it surely ranks with the highest when it ministers to those who suffer! And even as an innocent occupation it is not to be despised. All such work is better than dull vacuity or lack of interest in domestic life. A passion for such things is not the worst passion that can possess a woman's soul. Besides, needlework is an admirable sedative to the nerves. Mary Washington's knitting helped to relieve her mind of its tension when circumstances seemed so unfortunate and discouraging. Perhaps the Queen of Scots sometimes forgot the uncertain tenure by which she held her beautiful head because she had a passion for embroidery and was, every day, expecting new flosses and filoselles from France to finish something very lovely which she had commenced. But knitting was not with Mary Washington and her daughters a matter of sentiment or resorted to as a nerve cure. It was simply the natural expression of pure benevolence. There was no money to buy--nothing imported to be bought. The destitution of the soldiers pressed heavily upon the hearts of these good women. Constantly employed every moment of their waking hours, they might hope to achieve something to add to that "cap upon which was written 'Liberty.'" The Phrygian cap might indeed protect the fervid brain of the patriot, but could in no wise comfort his weary feet! American women have never failed in time of war to give the work of their own hands. With the wife of another Virginia commander, Mary Custis Lee, knitting was as inveterate a habit in the time of America's Civil War as it was with her great-grandmother, Martha Washington, in the war of the American Revolution. Many were the soldiers who were comforted in body and heartened in spirit by the gifts of these noble women--all the more because they were wrought by their own gentle hands. CHAPTER X MRS. ADAMS AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES