"I dare say it would be for you or me. Yet in those countries little children work at lace-making. Little children, old women and the least skilful of the men make the plainer and coarser laces, while experienced women make the nicer sorts."
"What do they do with their lace when it is finished?"
"All the lace-makers in a neighborhood bring in their laces once a week to the 'mistress'--for women carry on the business of lace-making--then this 'mistress' packs them up and takes them to the nearest market-town, where they are peddled about from one trading-house to another until they are all sold."
"The poor lace-makers get hardly enough to keep them from starvation for their fine and delicate work; but the laces, after they have passed through the hands of one trader after another, and are at last offered to the public, bring enormous prices. A nice library might be bought for the price of a set of laces, or a beautiful house built at the cost of a single flounce."
"I think I should rather have the house, mamma."
"So should I. But the people who buy these laces probably have houses already. There is over four million dollars' worth of lace sold every year in Belgium alone."
Ellen thought she should never see a piece of nice lace without thinking of these wonderful lace-makers, who produce such delicate work and yet are paid so little for it; and while she was thus thinking over the matter, mamma went quietly on with her sewing.
Many boys and girls make a failure in life because they do not learn to help themselves. They depend on father and mother even to hang up their hats and to find their playthings. When they become men and women, they will depend on husbands and wives to do the same thing. "A nail to hang a hat on," said an old man of eighty years, "is worth everything to a boy." He had been "through the mill," as people say, so that he knew. His mother had a nail for him when he was a boy--"a nail to hang his hat on," and nothing else. It was "Henry's nail" from January to January, year in and out, and no other member of the family was allowed to appropriate it for any purpose whatever. If the broom by chance was hung thereon, or an apron or coat, it was soon removed, because that nail was "to hang Henry's hat on." And that nail did much for Henry; it helped make him what he was in manhood--a careful, systematic, orderly man, at home and abroad, on his farm and in his house. He never wanted another to do what he could do for himself.