Though this is true of all household linen, it is, especially so of table
linen, which seems to weave into its delicate patterns and traceries all
the light and sunshine of the room, and to give them back to us in the
warming, quickening good cheer which radiates from a table daintily
dressed. Its influence refines, as all that is chaste and pure must
refine, and helps to make of mealtime something more than merely
mastication. Human nature's daily food seems to lose something of its
grossness in its snowy setting, and to gain a spiritual savor which finds
an outlet in "feasts of reason and flows of soul." When we have
immaculate table linen we dine; otherwise we simply eat, and there are
whole decades of civilization between the two.



LINEN, PAST AND PRESENT

Linen is a fabric with a past: it clothed the high priests of Israel for
their sacred offices, and comes as a voice from the tombs of Egypt, where
it enwraps the mummies of the Pharaohs, telling of a skill in weaving so
marvelous that even our improved machinery of to-day can produce nothing
to approach it. And then it comes on down through the centuries to those
nearer and dearer days of our grandmothers, when it was spun and woven by
gentle fingers; while the halo of romance hovers over it even now as the
German Hausfrau fills the dowry chest of her daughter in anticipation of
the time when she, in turn, shall become a housewife. Small wonder that
we love it, and guard jealously against a stain on its unblemished
escutcheon.