knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children
could spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers.
Fine knitting was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the
knitter, and many curious and elaborate stitches were known; the
herring-bone and the fox- and geese-patterns being prime favorites.
Initials were knit into mittens and stockings; one clever young miss of
Shelburne, N. H., could knit the alphabet and a verse of poetry into a
single pair of mittens. Fine embroidery was to New England women and
girls a delight. The Indians at an early day called the English women
"lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of
digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716,
taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as
Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way,
Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses,
flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing,
Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking
children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery
on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels,
embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers.
Many of the fruits of these careful lessons of colonial childhood
remain to us; quaint samplers, bed hangings, petticoats and pockets, and
frail lace veils and scarfs. Miss Susan Hayes Ward has resuscitated from
these old embroideries a curious stitch used to great effect on many of
them, and employed also on ancient Persian embroideries, and she points
out that the designs are Persian also. This stitch was not known in the
modern English needlework schools; but just as good old Elizabethan
words and phrases are still used in New England, though obsolete in
England, so this curious old stitch has lived in the colony when lost in
the mother country; or, it may be possible, since it is found so
frequently in the vicinity of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims obtained both
stitch and designs in Holland, whose greater commerce with the Orient
may have supplied to deft English fingers the Persian pattern.

Other accomplishments were taught to girls; "cutting of Escutcheons" and
paper flowers--"Papyrotamia" it was ambitiously called--and painting on
velvet; and quilt-piecing in a hundred different and difficult designs.
They also learned