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Updated: June 9, 2025
Thou hast forgotten, O Sancho, those lines of our poet wherein he paints for us how, in their crystal abodes, those four nymphs employed themselves who rose from their loved Tagus and seated themselves in a verdant meadow to embroider those tissues which the ingenious poet there describes to us, how they were worked and woven with gold and silk and pearls; and something of this sort must have been the employment of my lady when thou sawest her, only that the spite which some wicked enchanter seems to have against everything of mine changes all those things that give me pleasure, and turns them into shapes unlike their own; and so I fear that in that history of my achievements which they say is now in print, if haply its author was some sage who is an enemy of mine, he will have put one thing for another, mingling a thousand lies with one truth, and amusing himself by relating transactions which have nothing to do with the sequence of a true history.
"Idle hands!" exclaimed Nora. "Far from it. Jessica has a blouse to finish and I have innumerable initials to embroider." "I am the only idle one," confessed Anne. "I am sorry to say that I haven't the least desire to be industrious. I prefer to sit with my hands folded and watch the rest of you work. It sounds lazy, doesn't it?" "Not a bit of it," declared Grace loyally.
She could make caps like a Parisian milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels. She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider prie-dieu chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace like Fairy Fingers herself.
Sacrifices are often performed in this spirit; and when a beautiful order and religious calm have come to dignify the performance, the mind, having meantime very little to occupy it, may embroider on the given theme. It is then that fable, and new religious sentiments suggested by fable, appear prominently on the scene.
These things are manufactured by the peasantry of the hill-country in the neighborhood of San Germano, who grow, shear, spin, weave, dye and embroider the wool themselves. And being barbarously unsophisticated by any adulteration of cotton, and in no wise stinted in the quantity of material, they are wonderfully strong and enduring.
Gold wire, for example, and spangles, coral and pearls, which have been used with admirable discretion, as well as to vulgar purpose. Bead embroidery is at least as old as ancient Egypt. The question almost occurs: with what can one not embroider? In Madras they produce most brilliant embroidery upon muslin with the cases of beetles' wings.
The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New England kitchens of old times, the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books, this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things.
It carries away something, too scents calculated to bewilder the thrift-hunting bee: sometimes a whiff of peppermint from an old lady's pew, but oftener the breath of musk and southernwood, gathered in ancient gardens, and borne up here to embroider the preacher's drowsy homilies, and remind us, when we faint, of the keen savor of righteousness.
She could not only sing like a lark, and dance divinely, and embroider beautifully, and spell as well as a "Dixonary" itself, but she had such a kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own as won the love of everybody who came near her, from Miss Minerva herself down to the poor girl in the scullery and the one-eyed tart woman's daughter, who was permitted to vend her wares once a week to the young ladies in the Mall.
And then I was so busy I couldn't get a chance to work at home, and they wouldn't let me embroider on the cars; they said it made the other passengers afraid. . . Take the slippers and wear them next your heart, Elsie dear, for every stitch in them is a testimony of the affection which two of your loyalest friends bear you. Every single stitch cost us blood.
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