Sutherland and the Reay country

A SHORT TREATISE ON HOMESPUN. 85
progress, and that the check to fireside winter-work, though
sad, was inevitable, and must be endured because of com-
pensating advantages. It also seemed not improbable that
it might be set aside as only a woman's question.
This indeed it has eventually become in the widest sense,
mainly on account of the kind of sympathetic impulse
required to initiate a remedial domestic movement, and the
special skill and careful personal supervision, which, from
the nature of the work, is needed to encourage and direct
it. As good, that has once been personally experienced,
rises again to the surface, even after a tempestuous lifetime
of evil, so, notwithstanding the contamination of southern
influence, every year increased appreciation of the artistic
merits and practical usefulness of their hand-made tweeds,
is returning to the northern people. The thatched, chimney-
less roof of the cabin, once the only dwelling of the
industrious weaver, now more often than not shelters his
sleek cow ; the weaver himself sitting snugly between slates
above and white-washed walls around, and it is not too
optimistic to assert that the webs of moss-green, heather-red,
and sky-blue, peacefully rolled out from his purring loom,
could, if correct in quantity, and perfect in quality, be sold
trebly over, even were the number of weavers doubled
throughout the county.
From parish to parish busy committees are forming
themselves, for encouragement and communication with the
market, and while there is no idea of competing with the
great woollen factories of Bradford, Huddersfield, etc.,
either in pattern or in price, the orders from London trades-
men for genuine homespun goes on, like the mountain
stream, torrential in the proper season, and silent at others.