But there was much social enjoyment in it too, and much interest excited by the offering of prizes to efficient and rapid spinsters. It was not unusual for a woman in those days to tuck her baby under one arm, tie her wheel behind her, and trot off on horseback to spend the day in spinning with a neighbor. Many a well-to-do matron “had a touch so skilful that she could spin two threads, one in each hand, while she kept the treadle of her flax-wheel moving with her foot, held the baby asleep across her knees, and talked with her visitors.” Or, when weather permitted, “the wide hospitable door would be thrown open, and the thrifty house-wife in afternoon dress of mull or ‘taffety’ and a fine cambric apron, would step back and forth before the great wool-wheel set in the spaceway spinning fine yarn while neighbors dropped in.” Speaking of two-handed wheels, I find the following quaint advertisement in the Hartford “Courant” for January 5, 1801:— “ALL kinds of SPINNING WHEELS and REELS made and repaired by JOEL BALDWIN of Bristol living on the road from Cambridge Meeting-House to Farmington. “_N. B._ Two handed wheels are highly recommended to young Women, as they can spin one third faster on them. “BRISTOL, Dec. 15.” And then the spinning-bees and spinning classes—the sewing circles of those days. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts as early as 1640 took legal steps to encourage the culture and spinning of flax, and every family was ordered to spin a certain amount of flax a year on penalty of a fine, and often prizes were offered for quantity and quality. On Boston Common the spinsters would sometimes meet with their wheels, and sit them down to spin—rich and poor alike, to the number, once, of three hundred. Think you the haughty spinsters of Boston would do the like to-day? On one occasion they were preached to by the minister in a long and profitable sermon, and a collection of £453 was taken up. This most edifying event took place in 1754. Sermons and spinning evidently went hand in hand, for I find in the Litchfield “Monitor” for May 16, 1798, the following item of news:— “SOUTH FARMS, May 7. “On Wednesday, the 2d instant visited at the house of the Rev. _Amos Chase_, about 60 of his female friends parishioners:—Who made the very acceptable presentation of seventy run of Yarn to his family. In the course of the decent and cordial socialties of the afternoon, the ladies were entertained by their Pastor with a sermon adapted to the occasion,—from these words, Gen. xxxi. 43, ‘_What can I do, this day, unto these my daughters?_’” From an address by the Rev. Grant Powers on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the town of Goshen, Connecticut, in 1838, I quote the following account of a great spinning-match among the ladies about 1772:—