Now Aunt Honeyman was a woman of spirit and resolution, and when she found her income sadly diminished by financial reverses she brought her furniture to Brighton, also a faithful maid servant who had learned her letters and worked her first sampler under Miss Honeyman's own eye, and whom she adored all through her life.

How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted?

Sewing, for example: little girls no longer make samplers, working on them the letters of the alphabet in "cross- stitch"; they learn to do cross-stitch letters, only they learn not by working the entire alphabet on a square of linen merely available to "learn on," but by working the initials of a mother or an aunt on a "guest towel," which later serves as a Christmas or a birthday gift of the most satisfactory kind!

Certainly we do it with as conscientious a care as ever watched over the stitches of the little girls of old as they made the faded samplers we cherish so affectionately.

I had entered on my studies at Oxford while you were probably a good little girl working your sampler at home!"

Some had samplers marked with letters and devices in vari-colored silk.

Some had samplers marked with letters and devices in vari-colored silk.

At such times Bill explained glibly enough that no pay dump carried steady values, and that an inexperienced sampler was apt to get "skunked" under the best of circumstances.

We thought of Shirley's old hall growing sadly quiet and chill as it lost the merry chatter about the "tabull-bord"; as saddles and bridles jingled there for the last time on their way to some far outbuilding; as the gentlewomen carried their needlework away, and the little maids followed with their samplers.

SEE Orr, Anne. Silhouettes and samplers.

SEE Orr, Anne. Silhouettes and samplers.

Silhouettes and samplers, set L. © 8May26; A895449.

The W. Somerset Maugham sampler.

Dulcie sews a sampler.

(In The Arkham sampler, spring 1949) © 1May49; B195502.

SEE Orr, Anne. Silhouettes and samplers.

SEE Orr, Anne. Silhouettes and samplers.

Silhouettes and samplers, set L. © 8May26; A895449.

The W. Somerset Maugham sampler.

(In Arkham sampler, winter 1949)

Parson's sampler.

He moves small fingers much, and all his speech Is like a sampler of precisest words, Set in the pattern of a simpleton.

At the time when the rage of writing has seized the old and young, when the cook warbles her lyricks in the kitchen, and the thrasher vociferates his heroicks in the barn; when our traders deal out knowledge in bulky volumes, and our girls forsake their samplers to teach kingdoms wisdom; it may seem very unnecessary to draw any more from their proper occupations, by affording new opportunities of literary fame.

Further on 'At the middle of the Hill sate Pan, and two Virgins keeping sheepe, and sowing in their Samplers.'

We have the parlor all to ourselves, and there are samplers hung up, and oh! such funny pictures, and the landlady is beginning to spoil me already.