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Updated: June 6, 2025
Barton had given her the materials, and she thought it would be an excellent lesson in needle-work as well as a useful gift to Ben, who, boy-like, never troubled himself as to what he should wear when his one suit of clothes gave out.
But the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she read, and rather proud of it. They were not girls who embroidered or abandoned themselves to needle-work.
"Because, my dear, the shop would do them very badly, very dearly, and very slowly. Do you remember reading to me about Caesar, and what he said 'that a general should not say to his troops "GO and attack the enemy," "but COME and attack the enemy"? Well, that applies to needle-work.
She was much happier, although she would have sternly denied it to herself, when she was watching with the sick and putting her wonderful needle-work into shrouds, for it was in request for that also. Except for an increase in staidness and dignity, and a certain decorous change in her garments, Charlotte Barnard did not seem to grow old at all.
A sampler is still in existence which she made at the age of eleven, a fine specimen of needle-work with the family record surrounded by a wreath of strawberries all carefully wrought in crewels. There is also a bedquilt, the pieces sewed together with the fine "over-and-over" stitch, and there are ruffles hemmed with stitches so tiny they scarcely can be distinguished.
The specimens of her work yet existing are principally bed-trimmings, hangings, and coverlets, composed of dark satin, upon which flowers, separately embroidered, are transferred. The romances and lays of chivalry contain many descriptions of the ornamental needle-work of those early days.
Its faded curtains of blue rep, its buff walls, on which the pictures and miniatures in their tarnished gilt frames were arranged at intervals in stiff patterns and groups; the Italian glass, painted with dilapidated Cupids, over the mantel-piece; the two or three Sheraton arm-chairs and settees, covered with threadbare needle-work from the days of "Evelina"; a carpet of old and well-preserved Brussels blue arabesques on a white ground; one or two pieces of old satin-wood furniture, very fine and perfect; a heavy centre-table, its cloth garnished with some early Victorian wool-work, and a pair of pink glass vases; on another small table close by, of a most dainty and spindle-legged correctness, a set of Indian chessmen under a glass shade; and on another a collection of tiny animals, stags and dogs for the most part, deftly "pinched" out of soft paper, also under glass, and as perfect as when their slender limbs were first fashioned by Cousin Mary Leicester's mother, somewhere about the year that Marie Antoinette mounted the scaffold.
In this room I have successfully exploded the old theory that all furniture in a well planned room must be of the same kind! In this room there are several Marlborough chairs, a davenport and a semi-circular fireside seat upholstered in a soft green leather, several chairs covered in a chintz of bird and blossom design, and other chairs covered with old English needle-work.
There was no one else to talk to; the soil was strange, and the atmosphere a foreign one to me; life did not seem to be taken seriously out there, as it was back in New England, where they always loved to sit down and talk things over. I was downright lonesome for my mother and sisters. I could not go out very much at that time, so I occupied myself a good deal with needle-work.
"His girls take in sewing, I have heard," said a third, who spoke with a slight air of contempt, as if there were something disgraceful attached to needle-work, when pursued as a means of livelihood. I would have called during the day, upon Wightman, but failed to ascertain his place of residence. "Glad to see you!"
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