Next comes:
- washing/blocking,
- sewing in the zipper,
- sewing down the inside edge of the collar (with the upper end of the zipper tucked inside),
- wearing it through the long remainder of the Chicago winter (i.e., until the fourth of July) feeling warm, snug, and happy to be a knitter.
After playing hunt-the-zipper in and around Chicago, I gave up and have ordered a metal zip in a custom length. It's worth it. The alternatives were a sticky, white plastic piece of crap from Jo-Ann Fabric; or the same piece of crap marked up 50% more at one of our few remaining sewing shops. Before I let anything like that near my knitting, I'll close the fronts with wads of chewed bubblegum.
Learn Along with Franklin: Part II
In our first installment, we learned something about Native American culture. Today, our topic is good manners. The lessons are taken from this tiny volume.
It doesn't look like much on the outside, but inside it's a Wow.
Etiquette for Little Folks (part of "Susie Sunbeam's Series") was printed in Boston in 1856. It's a model of didactic mid-19th century children's literature.
The sole decoration is an engraved frontispiece showing a young girl literally taking her younger brother under her wing. Behind the kids, Mama contentedly gets on with her sewing.
After that: nothing but ninety-six closely-printed pages of firm, unvarnished admonitions. The upright, emphatic metal type gives the text a bold authority that you won't find in any modern namby-pamby children's book.
A few lessons, quoted verbatim, from the redoubtable Miss Sunbeam:
AT HOME.
If you wish to speak to your parents, and see them engaged in discourse with company, draw back, and leave your business till afterwards; but if it is really necessary to speak to them, be sure to whisper.
Never speak to you parents without some title of respect, as Sir, Madam, &c.
Never make faces or contortions, nor grimaces, while any one is giving you commands.
Use respectful and courteous language towards all the domestics. Never be domineering or insuting, for it is the mark of an ignorant and purse-proud child.
AT TABLE.
Sit not down until your elders are seated. It is unbecoming to take your place first.
When you are helped, be not the first to eat.
AMONG OTHER CHILDREN.
Be not selfish altogether, but kind, free, and generous to others.
Scorn not, nor laugh at any because of their infirmities; nor affix to any one vexing title of contempt and reproach; but pity such as are so visited, and be glad you are otherwise distinguished and favored.
IN SCHOOL.
Bow at entering, especially if the teacher be present.
Make not haste out of school, but soberly retire when your turn comes, without hurrying.
IN THE STREET.
Jeer not any person whatever.
Give your superiors place to pass before you, in any narrow place where two persons cannot pass at once.
GOING INTO COMPANY.
A young person ought to be able to go into a room, and address the company, without the least embarrassment.
CLEANLINESS.
Now, clean garments and a clean person, are as necessary to health, as to prevent giving offence to other people. It is a maxim with me, which I have lived to see verified, that he who is negligent at twenty years of age, will be a sloven at forty, and intolerable at fifty.
MODESTY.
Nothing can atone for the want of modesty; without it, beauty if ungraceful, and wit detestable.
GOOD BREEDING.
Observe the best and most well-bred of the French people; how agreeably they insinuate little civilities in their conversation. They think it so essential that they call an honest and civil man by the same name, of "honnete homme;" and the Romans called civility, "humanitas," as thinking it inseparable from humanity: and depend upon it, that your reputation and success will, in a great measure, depend upon the degree of good breeding of which you are master.
I cannot read this book without thinking of the well-to-do children in my own neighborhood. They routinely call their mothers "stupid" at the top of their lungs, insult their teachers and bully their nannies, kick passers-by, and yell at coffee shop baristas for insufficiently sprinkling their cocoa–all without fear of reprimand. And I weep.If you wish to speak to your parents, and see them engaged in discourse with company, draw back, and leave your business till afterwards; but if it is really necessary to speak to them, be sure to whisper.
Never speak to you parents without some title of respect, as Sir, Madam, &c.
Never make faces or contortions, nor grimaces, while any one is giving you commands.
Use respectful and courteous language towards all the domestics. Never be domineering or insuting, for it is the mark of an ignorant and purse-proud child.
AT TABLE.
Sit not down until your elders are seated. It is unbecoming to take your place first.
When you are helped, be not the first to eat.
AMONG OTHER CHILDREN.
Be not selfish altogether, but kind, free, and generous to others.
Scorn not, nor laugh at any because of their infirmities; nor affix to any one vexing title of contempt and reproach; but pity such as are so visited, and be glad you are otherwise distinguished and favored.
IN SCHOOL.
Bow at entering, especially if the teacher be present.
Make not haste out of school, but soberly retire when your turn comes, without hurrying.
IN THE STREET.
Jeer not any person whatever.
Give your superiors place to pass before you, in any narrow place where two persons cannot pass at once.
GOING INTO COMPANY.
A young person ought to be able to go into a room, and address the company, without the least embarrassment.
CLEANLINESS.
Now, clean garments and a clean person, are as necessary to health, as to prevent giving offence to other people. It is a maxim with me, which I have lived to see verified, that he who is negligent at twenty years of age, will be a sloven at forty, and intolerable at fifty.
MODESTY.
Nothing can atone for the want of modesty; without it, beauty if ungraceful, and wit detestable.
GOOD BREEDING.
Observe the best and most well-bred of the French people; how agreeably they insinuate little civilities in their conversation. They think it so essential that they call an honest and civil man by the same name, of "honnete homme;" and the Romans called civility, "humanitas," as thinking it inseparable from humanity: and depend upon it, that your reputation and success will, in a great measure, depend upon the degree of good breeding of which you are master.
Come back, Susie Sunbeam, come back. We need you.
