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Updated: June 20, 2025
To-day the men had revolted and wandered off but Susan continued industriously intent over patches and darns. She sat on a log, her spools and scissors beside her, billows of homespun and calico about her feet. As she sewed she sung in a low undervoice, not looking up. Beyond her in the shade Daddy John mended a piece of harness.
The third example shows the darning stitch forming a diamond pattern. Samplers, dated early XIXth century, may be seen entirely filled with these pattern darns; they are covered with most intricate and beautiful sample squares showing various patterns in darning, and were possibly done in order to learn how to repair damask table linen.
"Why, your white muslin, silk sacque, and new hat, of course," began Pris with an air of surprise. But Kitty broke in impetuously, "I'll never wear that old muslin again; it's full of darns, up to my knees, and all out of fashion. So is my sacque; and as for my hat, though it does well enough here, it would be absurd for Class Day."
Some fine gentleman writers there be men whose world is bounded on the east by Bond Street who see in the struggles of poverty to hide its darns only matter for jest. But myself, I cannot laugh at them. I know the long hopes and fears that centre round the hired waiter; the long cost of the cream and the ice jelly ordered the week before from the confectioner's.
That he is economical in his habits cannot be denied, for he saws and splits his own wood, for exercise, he says, and makes his own fires, brushes his own shoes, and, it is whispered, darns a hole in a stocking now and then, all for exercise, I suppose. Every summer he goes out of town for a few weeks.
The coat, of an old-fashioned cut, and the trousers, showed various clumsy darns. The buttons had evidently just been renewed. The coat, buttoned to the chin, showed no linen; and the cravat, of a rusty black, hid the greater part of a false collar. These clothes, worn for many years, smelt of poverty.
Each knife had been worn to a point, and a few of them joggled in their handles. In a lull of the talk I caught myself idly counting the darns in my table-napkin. They were if I remember fourteen, and all exquisitely stitched.
Moreover, he was more shabbily dressed than any other gentleman present, with a general outgrown look about his coat, and darns in his silk stockings; and though they were made by the hand of a Countess, that did not add to their elegance.
He had a cold and no handkerchief, his little hands were red with chilblains, his clothes shabby, he had untidy darns in the knees of his stockings, and a head of tight curls that evidently had not been combed for some time. "Yes, I know he is, and I try to keep him decent, but I forget, and he hates to be fixed, and Miss Bat doesn't care, and father laughs when I talk about it."
She took the Mother's hand, confidently, caressingly. The end of the thin black veil, that was shabby now, and had darns in many places, was wafted across her face by a vagrant puff of cooled air from the river, and she kissed it, bringing the tears very near the deep, sad eyes that looked at her, and then turned away.
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