My friends - Today, we are reviewing another of Dr. Gordon Wilson's delightful essays. This selection - one of his longer ones - comes from his little book, "Passing Institutions" and is entitled, 'The Home-Knit Yarn Stockings'. Dr. Wilson, in his usual, almost magical, way, transports us back in time to share the experience of making and using home-knit stockings. My own parents spoke of their home-knit stockings in their lifetime, and it was one of their special memories. As is now customary, there will be no data posts tomorrow or on the weekend, and I will not have the necessary time to convert and offer a miscellaneous file. I will return with a posting on Monday. -B +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ THE HOME-KNIT YARN STOCKINGS -Dr. A. Gordon Wilson “Passing Institutions” Some generations hence it may seem as strange to Bible readers to read about sheep as to hear of oxen hitched to a plow; but to us who have worn home-knit yarn stockings and have watched their development from the time the wool left the sheep's back, there will always be a romance about sheep quite as real as the Oriental poets themselves have felt. Many an upland field not good for cultivation formerly had its flock of sheep, browsing among the sassafras and persimmon bushes and sounding their appealing voices over field and wood. Practically unnoticed through the summer, they became the especial care of the younger children through the winter. Regardless of the calendar or the late frosts, the day the sheep were sheared in the spring was the signal for the boys and girls to "pull off barefooted." Any boy would gladly hold a sheep's head while a man cut off the fleece, particularly if one's feet could feel a freedom not previously experienced in many months of hard winter. If sheep could stand the bleak late-spring days, so could boys and girls. And the boy had a distinct advantage over the sheep, for in a few days of going bare­footed he acquired a toughened skin that could resist any ordinary frost. The Prisoner of Chillon could not have felt any greater freedom when he was released than did a boy's feet after their long confinement in brogans. After the shearing came another interesting event, the washing of the wool. Father, Mother, and all the children were called into service, and when the day was over, all the sheds were covered as if with a very-much-belated fall of snow. While most of the dirt was removed by this washing, the burrs and coarser particles of dirt remained. Thus it was necessary to have a wool-picking. This often occasioned a number of neighborly gatherings. Great art was shown in removing the worst burrs without resorting to the use of scissors. A big split basket in the corner received the cleaned wool; the same basket held the wool when it was taken to the carding mills and made into light, fluffy rolls. Before my time the rolls were made at home. I myself have made a few rolls with cotton cards, largely for the experience, but I had the satisfaction of seeing Mother spin these rolls along with those from the mills. By the time the wool had been cleaned and made into rolls it was the season for Mother to start spinning. Early in the fall the spinning wheel was brought out from the shed or the attic, and, as the evening passed away, the subdued, musical sound of the wheel filled the house, lending a picturesque setting for the stories I read or the dreams I projected. Outside in the murky sky I sometimes heard passing a flock of wild geese; the music of the wheel and the stirring call of the birds of passage have so associated themselves in my memory that the one brings up the other. Though I hear each Fall the same wild geese, it seems, pass­ing over my house, I miss the whirr of the spinning wheel and the odor of fresh rolls of wool. "Hank" is not a dignified term in our day, but to me it suggests the hank of yarn thread that I so often held while Mother wound the thread into large, soft balls. I was doing this very thing once when my big sister was reading aloud the passage in Longfellow's "The Courtship of Miles Standish" which tells how John Alden held the hank of yarn for Priscilla, the "beautiful maiden." And so wild geese and the glow of early autumn fires and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and the sound of the spinning wheel are all mixed up in my memories, quite too tangled for me to wish to separate them. Nearer and nearer comes the process of the annual making of stockings. On some evening by the fireside Mother brought out her knitting needles and set to work. Faster than sight itself her fingers clicked the needles, the stocking growing visibly in a single evening. Even if she nodded, the knitting went on, we always stoutly maintained, and it is certain that she could knit without looking at her work. It was a great event when she reached the heel and doubled the thread. Up until that time the prospect for a stocking seemed very slender; now the completed article was almost in sight. A few more evenings, and the pair was complete, in form but not in color, for dye must be allowed its share in the stocking which was to have so great a history. By the time a new pair had been knit for each member of the family, Christmas was near, the season created especially for the home-knit stocking. Just a few days before Christmas Mother dyed the whole output of her fall and winter knitting and re­dyed the stockings that had had to be supplied with new feet. Initiation for the new stocking was then at hand. The snake has long had an undeserved reputation for powers of distention; that honor should go to the home-knit yarn stocking. On Christmas morning my new pair would have more contents than would have comfortably filled a gallon bucket. In another way they resembled snakes, for there were startling knots along the stockings, revealing the presence of an apple or orange, fruits little seen except at Christmas. The smaller spaces were snugly full of candy, raisins, figs, nuts, and the inevitable bale of firecrackers and a Roman candle sticking out at the top. Bulkier objects were laid in the chair on which the stockings were hung. Fortuna's horn may have been good enough for the over­aesthetic Greeks; I prefer as a symbol of plenty the Christmas stocking, and since the home-knit variety has the greatest powers of distention, then that one as the modern representation of abundance. For the greater part of Christmas morning I delved into those stockings, finding new treasures as I proceeded. I literally ate my way through. Occasionally I encountered days afterwards a lump of something which proved on investigation to be a remnant of figs or raisins, overlooked in my early-morning search. During Christmas week or later, whenever there was a snow, the new stockings were needed, even being re-enforced by an old pair pulled on over the shoes and used for leggings. This was the regulation outfit for rabbit-hunting. Yarn stockings have a way of keeping the feet fairly warm, in spite of their being wet. Even "during books" in the subscription school which was often held after the holidays a fellow needed the warmth of wool stockings, for the two stoves, "with half a cord o' wood in," made little impression on the arctic temperature of the old nondescript schoolhouse. We welcomed a chance to get out into the snow to drag up saplings for wood, for by that means we kept our blood circulating and also avoided the necessity for studying or for sitting quiet. What with rabbit-hunting, going to school, and doing the necessary chores about the farm, we soon needed repairs for our stockings. After supper, that busy time for Mother, the darning gourd was inserted into the worn stockings and the holes mended. This repairing process had to be resorted to a number of times during the winter. By the second winter the feet were too much worn to be darned; this necessitated new feet. The old pair with the new feet was again subjected to dyeing, but even then the tops had a much darker color, revealing that they were second-season stockings. I recall how disappointed I was once when Mother was unable to get my new stockings dyed in time for me to hang them up, and I had to use a pair that had been re-dyed. Santa Claus seemed to know no difference between the new and the old, for his apples, oranges, figs, raisins, and nuts came true to form, and the Roman candles and fire­crackers looked fully as good as at any other time. After the days of the stocking as a useful object of apparel were over, it still had a history. It could be worn over the shoes in winter, as I have already indicated, and in this capacity it often served through a long snow. But there was one use which was supposed to be the end of old stockings quite as appropriate as the end of old battleships is said to be: from the worn toe we made a core of a ball and supplied the ball proper by unraveling the rest of the stocking and winding the thread until a good-sized ball was the result. Along toward the completion of the ball we threaded the yarn through a darning needle and sewed the ball thoroughly, so that it could stand rough treatment. We had never seen a baseball, and seldom a rubber ball. For all our games of ball--cat ball, bat ball, town ball, shinny, "antny over," hat ball--we used the home-grown product. I tell you, nothing hurts quite so much as a yarn ball soaked in water before nailing some fellow to the cross in the game of hat ball. This was the name we applied to one of our ceremonies in this game. When we played "antny over," the ball regularly got lodged on the roof of the schoolhouse, which required a vast amount of climbing the bell-post to dislodge it. Like the deacon's masterpiece, the ball does not wear out easily. Usually we threw it too far away and were never able to rediscover it. The yarn stocking, particularly the home­knit one, like the yarn ball, has gotten lost, "ne'er to be found again," A brief impulse to knitting was given by the[First] World War, but died down, just like many of the fine impulses of that war. Machinery can do the work so much more rapidly that we now buy our stockings and socks at the store, but no sentiment is attached to "boughten" stockings. Mother deservedly turns her attention to other things in the modern home, but I miss the music of the spinning wheel; I miss the feel of the hank of yarn in my hands; I miss the yarn ball that I once regarded as the finest toy; but I miss most of all the sight of the new pair of stockings bulging with treasures greater than those of Fortuna's horn. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++