Then an old man in a tower, Ringing loud the noontide hour, While the rope coils round and round Like a serpent at his feet, And again, in swift retreat, Nearly lifts him from the ground. Then within a prison-yard, Faces fixed, and stern, and hard, Laughter and indecent mirth; Ah! it is the gallows-tree! Breath of Christian charity, Blow, and sweep it from the earth! Then a schoolboy, with his kite Gleaming in a sky of light, And an eager, upward look; Steeds pursued through lane and field; Fowlers with their snares concealed; And an angler by a brook. Ships rejoicing in the breeze, Wrecks that float o’er unknown seas, Anchors dragged through faithless sand; Sea-fog drifting overhead, And, with lessening line and lead, Sailors feeling for the land. All these scenes do I behold, These, and many left untold, In that building long and low; While the wheel goes round and round, With a drowsy, dreamy sound, And the spinners backward go. --LONGFELLOW. [Illustration] CHAPTER I ANCIENT, MEDIÆVAL AND TRIBAL ROPE-MAKING How many people have ever given a thought to the question of where rope comes from and how it is made, or realize what a variety of uses it is put to, and how dependent we are upon it in many of the everyday affairs of life? But let us suppose for a moment that the world were suddenly deprived of its supply of this very commonplace material, and of its smaller relatives, cords and twine. We should then begin to realize the importance of a seemingly unimportant thing, and to appreciate the difficulty in getting along without it. Longfellow, in his poem “The Ropewalk,” which we have printed, shows that he recognized the scope of the usefulness of rope, and appreciated the romance and pathos connected with the use of a seemingly prosaic article; for in his brief catalogue of the uses of rope which passed in pictured procession through his mind, as he stood in the ropewalk and came under the influence of the drowsy hum and whir of the spinners’ wheels, he succeeded in covering a good share of the changing phases in the drama of human life: childhood in its swing, happy, without a care; the life of the sailor, which, with its heroism, its romance, its courageous meeting of danger or disaster, has always been the subject of verse and story; the pathetic picture of the faded beauty on the tight rope; and the tragic scene of the criminal dying upon the gallows. [Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ROPE]