THE LITTLE SILK QUEEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 116, 6 August 1927, Page 27

THE LITTLE SILK QUEEN

I wonder how many years a boy or girl could keep a secret. Not many, I fear. But the people of China kept the secret of silk-making for three thousand years. Long, long ago, the Queen of Cathay, which is just another way of saying the Empress of China, was sitting in the garden of the City of Heaven. This was really Hang Chow Foo, an old, old city in Southern China. On warm spring mornings the queen loved to sit here and enjoy the beauty of the mulberry trees; they were always, at this time of the year, dressed in new leaves and soft white blossoms, and here in her high-walled garden she could have their loveliness and fragrance all to herself. The leaves of the mulberry trees were dotted with pearly eggs no larger than mustard seeds. There were clumsy, white moths climbing all. over them. There were worms, too —some very tiny, and some as big as the queen’s little finger. The tiny ones were nibbling the leaves, but the largest ories. were gorged. These big ones were amber like a string of amber beads. There was a hump on their shoulders, a .spiny, little knot on the top of their_ tails, and sixteen lazy legs with which they were clinging to twigs as they spun and wound cradles in which to sleep. All this the queen watched as she sat in her chair in the garden. She could not understand what these little worms were doing, but her curiosity was aroused. Caterpillars might be called the “spinners of sunbeams.” As the queen watched, she saw a jet of shining fluid flow from each of two holes on the underside of the caterpillar’s mouth. Then the fluid hardened to a hair and became as fine and bright as a sunbeam. The caterpillar then bent backwards, nearly doubling up, and swung his head from side to side like a shuttle in a loom. It looped the filament backward and forward about its body. The gummy fluid clung together, and in a few minutes the caterpillar had wound itself up in a gauzy sac shaped like a peanut shell, without even a' hole for its head to stick out. All day long the little queen watched, wondering what the caterpillar would do next. But it never stopped for a minute. Inside its tiny home it went right on weaving until, at last, it went to sleep. Perhaps you didn’t know that caterpillars sleep, but they do; and this one slept, I am sure, with the thought that all its work had been well done. As the queen had been watching, she had been thinking. She knew that tho little worm had been spinning, and that the thread it had spun was finer than the thread of any dress she had. “I wonder if I could unwind it,” she said. “I believe I’ll try.’ She clapped her hands. That is what a Chinese empress does when she wants her ladies-of-the-court. Soon they appeared, tiny-footed maidens in sedan chairs carried by slaves. They were all much amused at the queen’s new game of unwinding the cocoons and just as curious as she. The queen, remembering the work of the caterpillar, joined the filaments of two cocoons. Then she joined more, and. by twisting them together, united them in one smooth thread. In this way she wound hundreds of yards without break or tangle. China already had looms for weaving cotton and wool, and now the queen invented a reeling wheel and set up a small silk mill on the palace grounds. She built a silk house, tdo, so that the moths and caterpillars should not be killed by bad weather or eaten by birds. She planted mulberry trees. She sent teachers all over China to show the poor people how to grow trees, care for the worms, reel the silk and weave the beautiful new cloth. By the time the queen died, Hang Chow Foo was famous for its silks and “needle-painting,” as embroidery work was called, and a monument was set up to her memory. For three thousand years this secret was kept. Finally it was carried to Japan, then to India, and at last to the Eiiropean ports. Now silk cloth can be bought in any country as easily as cotton or woollen cloth. We can wear dresses of shining, shimmering beauty, and all because of the little “silk queen of China” whose inventive mind and industry first gave it to the world. SMILES What is it which most people can see yet no eyes have ever looked upon? —A joke. Why is a horse like the letter O? — Because G (gee) makes it go. —Sent in by Alan Bull. RIDDLES What games does the sea play at?— Pitch and toss. Why does mother never make a square plum pudding?—Because she wants it to go round. * Why is a pianist like a prison warder?—Because he fingers the'keys.