Light or fancy needlework often forms a portion of the evening's recreation for the ladies of the household, and this may be varied by an occasional game at chess or backgammon.

Now for women, instead of laborious studies, they have curious needleworks, cut-works, spinning, bone-lace, and many pretty devices of their own making, to adorn their houses, cushions, carpets, chairs, stools, ("for she eats not the bread of idleness," Prov. xxxi.

She glanced at Lewisham, remained standing for awhile, sat down in the basket chair as if to resume some domestic needlework that lay upon the table, then rose and went back into the bedroom.

A bustling and active girl will always find time to do a little needlework for herself, if she lives with consistent and reasonable people.

Upstairs, from a room walled and ceiled with cedar, and decorated with the bold rose-pink embroideries of Salé and the intricate old needlework of Fez, I looked out over the upper city toward the mauve and tawny mountains.

If a lady, however, be engaged with light needlework, and none other is appropriate in the drawing-room, it may not be, under some circumstances, inconsistent with good breeding to quietly continue it during conversation, particularly if the visit be protracted, or the visitors be gentlemen.

The bed was white, but the pillows were covered with pink silk and encased in slips of linen lawn, exquisite with rare needlework.

In the curious little chapel hung with ancient tapestry, and containing the original Bible and Prayer Book of Charles I., are other quaint chairs covered with cushions of sixteenth or early seventeenth century needlework.

Another ornament of the mantel-piece was a square of silken needlework or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly representing that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Castle at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own.

It is not in the actual needlework, which is often a very inferior affair.

In the curious little chapel hung with ancient tapestry, and containing the original Bible and Prayer Book of Charles I., are other quaint chairs covered with cushions of sixteenth or early seventeenth century needlework.

In explanation of which, we may say that the mother, having something in her power during her husband's life, had foreseen the advantages of using it in the instruction of her quick and intelligent daughter in an art of far more importance then than nowthat of artistic, needlework.

His daughterthe now well-behaved, the now modest, Remedios, who was passing day after day at complicated needlework under the tutelage of doña Bernardahad grown up like a wild rabbit of the fields, repeating with shocking fidelity all the oaths and vile language she heard from the carters her father drank with.

She halted to regale her critical eye on the goodly needlework of a folding-screen whose joints, she noticed, could not be peered through, and in a pretty, bird-like way stole a glance behind it.