Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
At noon, a decorous walk with Papa, who for their benefit discourses on the General Depravity of Mankind in all Countries after the Fall, occasionally pausing by the way to point for them some moral of Nature. A silent supper, after which they work samplers. Another hymn to be learnt and repeated. Evening prayers. Bedtime: 'Good-night, dear Papa; good-night, dear Mamma.
It would take a great while to tell all that I saw, or their curious little speeches and words and assents. There were samplers in every style of lettering and color. The inevitable tombstone, with the weeping-willow and mourning female, was among them. Bits of painted velvet, huge reticules, bead purses; gay shawls, and curious lace caps all showed patient handiwork.
I think there must have been a fashion once, in Deephaven, of working these scarfs, and I should not be surprised to find that it was many years before the fashion of working samplers came about.
Why, we like to have a good assortment of crewels and floss to work tapestry with, and a quantity of bright-colored silk to embroider with, and " "Oh, that's what you like, Cousin Elizabeth; but mamma doesn't work samplers," said the boy, with a dash of pettish contempt in his tone.
"Then, why don't you help us with our samplers? why don't you aid us in our knitting? why don't you assist us in hemming garments?" exclaimed Miss Hendy, digging her spoon into the oyster-boat. "This is what I call the feast and flow," said Mr Pitskiver; while Mr Whalley nearly shook his head off his shoulders on to the table-cloth. The young ladies looked slyly at Mr Pitskiver, and laughed.
To smokers were given embroidered tobacco pouches in green, pink, and silver; one charming old beadwork tobacco pouch in Taunton Castle is embroidered "LOVE ME FOR I AM THINE, 1631." There were necklaces and bracelets of needlework, and some of coloured glass beads, as well as the long watchguards worn round the neck, chiefly of the nineteenth century. Old Samplers.
Marion returned, too, to this curious idea of hers about not being able to destroy ugly things just because they are old, although of course it is one's plain duty to replace ugly things with beautiful whatever the circumstances, when they stepped in, through no intervening hall or passage, to a little dark room furnished, as farm parlours are, with a grandfather clock, an oak settle, a dresser, a gate-leg table with a patchwork cloth over it, and samplers hanging on wallpaper of a trivial rosebud pattern.
They were handy girls, though they had never heard of a cooking-school, never touched a piano, and knew nothing of embroidery beyond the samplers which hung framed in the parlor; one ornamented with a pink mourner under a blue weeping-willow, the other with this pleasing verse, each word being done in a different color, which gave the effect of a distracted rainbow: "This sampler neat was worked by me, In my twelfth year, Prudence B."
Ruth and Peace and Harmony and Mercy made their samplers as faithfully as though they were growing up under the shade of the apple trees of old England instead of among the blackened stumps of newly cut forests.
These pictorial samplers are certainly interesting, but those which confine themselves to simple cross-stitch with borders, and the name of the little child who wrought them, touch a note of domestic life which is more than interesting. The sampler was purely English in its derivation and followed the English with great fidelity, although redolent of Puritan life and thought.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking