CHAPTER V

HOUSEHOLD LINEN

Most of us “women folk” have some one dear pet hobby which we love to humor and to cater to, and which variously expresses itself in china, bric-a-brac, books, collections of spoons or forks, and other things of beauty and joys forever.  But whatever our individual indulgences may be, one taste we share in common—­the love of neat napery.  Her heartstrings must indeed be toughly seasoned who feels no thrill of pride as she looks upon her piles of shining, satiny table linen, and takes account of her sheet, pillowcase and towel treasure.  They are her stocks and bonds, giving forth daily their bounteous, beauteous yield of daintiness and comfort, and paying for themselves many times over by the atmosphere of nicety and refinement which they create.  For it is these touches, unobtrusive by their very delicacy, which introduce that intangible but very essential quality known as tone into the home harmony.

Though this is true of all household linen, it is, especially so of table linen, which seems to weave into its delicate patterns and traceries all the light and sunshine of the room, and to give them back to us in the warming, quickening good cheer which radiates from a table daintily dressed.  Its influence refines, as all that is chaste and pure must refine, and helps to make of mealtime something more than merely mastication.  Human nature’s daily food seems to lose something of its grossness in its snowy setting, and to gain a spiritual savor which finds an outlet in “feasts of reason and flows of soul.”  When we have immaculate table linen we dine; otherwise we simply eat, and there are whole decades of civilization between the two.

LINEN, PAST AND PRESENT

Linen is a fabric with a past:  it clothed the high priests of Israel for their sacred offices, and comes as a voice from the tombs of Egypt, where it enwraps the mummies of the Pharaohs, telling of a skill in weaving so marvelous that even our improved machinery of to-day can produce nothing to approach it.  And then it comes on down through the centuries to those nearer and dearer days of our grandmothers, when it was spun and woven by gentle fingers; while the halo of romance hovers over it even now as the German Hausfrau fills the dowry chest of her daughter in anticipation of the time when she, in turn, shall become a housewife.  Small wonder that we love it, and guard jealously against a stain on its unblemished escutcheon.

BLEACHED AND “HALF-BLEACHED”