The spinning-wheel—symbol of the dignity of woman’s labor.—What wealth of memory gathers around the homely implement, homely indeed in the good old sense of the word—because belonging to the home. Home-made and home-spun are honorable epithets, replete with significance, for in them we find the epitome of the lives and labors of our foremothers. The plough and the axe are not more symbolic of the winning of this country from the wilderness, nor the musket of the winning of its freedom, than is the spinning-wheel in woman’s hands the symbol of both. So symbolic is it also of woman’s toil, of woman’s distinctive and universal occupation, nay, of woman herself, that the “distaff side of the house” has always been expressive of the woman’s family, and “spinster” is still the legal title of unmarried women in the common law of England. Most ancient of all household implements, it has been used in one form or another by queen, princess, and serving-maid, by farmer’s wife and noble’s daughter, until it stands to-day a silent witness to the fundamental democracy of mankind. “When Adam delved and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?” [Illustration: NETS] The mutual dependence of spinning and agriculture, of woman’s work and man’s, is also strikingly illustrated by a carving on an old sarcophagus in the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome, depicting the Eternal Father giving to Adam an instrument of tillage, and to Eve a distaff and spindle. Thus, coeval with man’s first appearance on this earth, no written page of history, no musty parchment or sculptured stone, is so old that we cannot find upon it some traces of the spindle and distaff with their tale of joys and sorrows spun into the thread by the fingers of patient women whose hearts beat as our own to-day, in tune with the common throb of humanity. Though we may strain our eyes into the darkness of prehistoric ages, when primeval woman used the tree-trunk of the forest for a distaff, we will still find there some evidence of the use of flax and hemp for threads and ropes. Even in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, belonging to the Stone Age, we see their use in various ways—in the fishing lines and nets, in the cords for carrying heavy vessels, and in the ropes necessary to the erection of these very lake-dwellings themselves. “Rough or unworked flax,” says Keller, “is found in the lake-dwellings made into bundles, or what are technically called heads, and ... it was perfectly clean and ready for use.” [Illustration: WOMAN SPINNING. 14TH-CENTURY] [Illustration: DESIGN ON MUMMY CLOTH] [Illustration: WOMAN SPINNING. 15TH-CENTURY]