DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67419#0035
EARLY NEEDLEWORK.
13
ment of the fall is difficult to account for in a world
where everything has its use, except we suppose
that they were meant for needles: and general
analogy leads us to this conclusion; for in almost all
existing records of people in what we are pleased
to call a “ savage” state, we find that women make
use of this primitive instrument, or a fish-bone.
“ Avant ^invention des aiguilles d’acier, on a du
se servir, a leur defaut, d’epines, ou d’aretes de
poissons, ou d’os d’animaux ” And as Eve’s first
specimen of needlework was certainly completed
before the sacrifice of any living thing, we may
safely infer that the latter implements were not
familiar to her. The Cimbrian inhabitants of
Britain passed their time in weaving baskets, or in
sewing together for garments the skins of animals
taken in the chase, while they used as needles for
uniting these simple habiliments small bones of
fish or animals rudely sharpened at one end; and
needles just of the same sort were used by the
inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, when the cele-
brated Captain Cook first visited them.
Proceed we to the material of the first needlework.
“ They sewed themselves fig-leaves together, and
made themselves aprons.”
Thus the earliest historical record; and thus the
most esteemed poetical commentator.
“ Those leaves
They gather’d, broad as Amazonian targe,
And, with what skill they had, together sew’d,
To gird their waist.”
It is supposed that the leaves alluded to here were
13
ment of the fall is difficult to account for in a world
where everything has its use, except we suppose
that they were meant for needles: and general
analogy leads us to this conclusion; for in almost all
existing records of people in what we are pleased
to call a “ savage” state, we find that women make
use of this primitive instrument, or a fish-bone.
“ Avant ^invention des aiguilles d’acier, on a du
se servir, a leur defaut, d’epines, ou d’aretes de
poissons, ou d’os d’animaux ” And as Eve’s first
specimen of needlework was certainly completed
before the sacrifice of any living thing, we may
safely infer that the latter implements were not
familiar to her. The Cimbrian inhabitants of
Britain passed their time in weaving baskets, or in
sewing together for garments the skins of animals
taken in the chase, while they used as needles for
uniting these simple habiliments small bones of
fish or animals rudely sharpened at one end; and
needles just of the same sort were used by the
inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, when the cele-
brated Captain Cook first visited them.
Proceed we to the material of the first needlework.
“ They sewed themselves fig-leaves together, and
made themselves aprons.”
Thus the earliest historical record; and thus the
most esteemed poetical commentator.
“ Those leaves
They gather’d, broad as Amazonian targe,
And, with what skill they had, together sew’d,
To gird their waist.”
It is supposed that the leaves alluded to here were