It was while we were browsing around Ghent that the ladies discovered a bit of handicraft that seems worth mentioning. We subsequently saw the same thing at Brussels and Antwerp, so that it appears to be distinctly a Belgian industry. In a large window they noticed two women engaged in what from over the way might have been taken for lace-making. Mrs. Professor hurried across at once to investigate and she and the Madame spent half an hour watching the operation. Each of the two women was engaged in repairing, the one a pair of trousers and the other an overcoat. In each case the repair consisted of literally weaving a new segment of cloth in place of the damaged portion. First cutting out all of the latter they frayed out an edge of the goods at some point where there was sufficient material turned under for their purpose. This done they took short strands of each of the various coloured yarns and, with infinite patience and skill, wove them together in an exact reproduction of the design of the original textile. So cleverly was the work done that when completed the reparation could not be detected. It is possible that repairing of this kind is done in America but none of us had ever seen or heard of it. In Belgium it seemed to be fairly common, being styled _Reparation invisible_, and the price varying from one to three or four francs for each hole repaired, according to the nature of the goods and the design. We also saw rugs being repaired in the same manner, as well as ladies' dress goods of every description. It is one of the most deplorable features of the war that its most fearful destructiveness should have been wreaked upon a little country where every small economy and patient utilisation of trifles had been practised for centuries. All Belgium is pre-eminently a land of thrift, of painstaking husbanding of small resources, and to beggar half the population of such a country means a calamity to each family group and individual far more poignant than would be the case where frugality was less deeply ingrained as a national characteristic. CHAPTER XI PHILIP THE GOOD AND THE VAN EYCKS