can seed fifteen bales in a day, a task which would need several thousand men to accomplish in the old way.

After a bale has reached the mill and been torn open, the machinery first frees the fibre from all dust and dirt and clinging leaves. By means of blowing and beating it is made as clean and fair as the driven snow. Then great rollers studded with fine wire teeth claw at the mass of cotton till the fibres lie smooth and straight in a fluffy white rope. This passes through other machines, and finally appears as a fine cotton thread. The thread is converted into cloth by looms run by water-power, steam, or electricity.

The finished cloth is sent to all parts of the United States, and to many distant countries across the sea. About half the people of the world wear cotton clothes.

Rhode Island continues to be a leader in cotton manufacturing, and among its other important manufactures are woolen goods, machinery, and rubber footwear. Scores of factories in Providence are devoted to making jewelry and silverware, and in this city is the greatest screw factory in the world. The place was at one time a lumber-shipping port, for there was much timber in the region that lay back from the bay and streams. This was uninvaded wilderness for many years after the settling of the watersides, but now the wooded tracts of the uplands and swamps yield little except firewood.

The highest point in Rhode Island is Durfee Hill, which rises 805 feet above the sea level on the northwestern border of the state.

Among the leaders in the Revolution the general who, next to Washington, did his country the greatest service, was Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. He was born in 1742 at Warwick, about ten miles south of Providence. His father was a Quaker, who owned flour and grist mills, and was a man of wealth for those days, but who thought the only education his sons needed was to learn to read, write, and cipher. This did not satisfy Nathanael, and when he earned money he spent it for books from which to acquire knowledge. At the age of twenty he began to read law and take

an interest in politics, and he helped to organize a body of militia in his home region. As soon as the news of Lexington and Concord reached Rhode Island, he and three others promptly galloped toward Boston to offer themselves as soldiers. The colony made him the

in 1756 Gilbert Stuart, one of the greatest of American painters. For a good many years he lived in London, where he won a notable reputation. When he returned in 1793 he painted portraits of Washington and other distinguished Americans that in lifelikeness and charm of color could hardly be surpassed.

South Kingston was the birthplace of Oliver Hazard Perry, the most picturesque naval hero of the War of 1812 and the commander of our fleet in the famous Battle of Lake Erie.

NEW

Birches beside Lake Winnepesaukee

Early New Hampshire

EW HAMPSHIRE and its seaport are indebted for their names to Captain John Mason, an English merchant and shipmaster to whom the region was granted by the king in 1629. The name of the colony was suggested by that of a county in southern England,

where Mason lived for years as mayor of the city of Portsmouth.

The first settlements were made in 1623 at Dover, a few miles up the Piscataqua, and Rye on the coast. A scattered settlement established somewhat later at the mouth of the river received the odd name of Strawberry Bank. Mason sent over implements and arms, food and clothing, cattle, and laborers; and he says, in a letter written in 1634, that for his outlay he had never received one penny.

In 1639 there were four primitive little towns in the colony. Within the next few years these were taken one at a time under the protection of Massachusetts, and New Hampshire did not have a separate organization again until about 1680.

For a long time the leading man of the province was Richard Waldron of Dover, and he was at length made sergeant-major of its military forces. He was largely engaged in trading with the Indians, and though a thorough Puritan in his religion, cheated them at every opportunity. It is said that he did not cross out their accounts when they paid him, and that in buying beaver skins he would use his fist as a balancing weight against the skins put on the opposite side of the scales, and claim it weighed a pound.

After King Philip's War had been in progress a few months, Major Waldron gave the master of a vessel which was about to visit the Maine coast a warrant to seize any Indians he found in those parts. The