wear was so
cleverly simulated as to look almost detachable. Of course such pictures
were the result of individual experiment on the part of some very able
and ambitious needlewoman.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM AND ISAAC. Kensington embroidery by Mary Winifred
Hoskins of Edenton, N. C., while attending an English finishing school
in Baltimore in 1814.

_Courtesy of Mrs. R. B. Mitchell, Madison, N. J._]

One can imagine that the effect of them in social life was to add
greatly to the vogue of the art of needlework. The most numerous of
these relics were called "mourning pieces"--bits of memorial
embroidery--the subject of the picture being generally a monument
surmounted by an urn, overhung with the sweeping branches of a willow,
while standing beside the monument is a weeping female figure, the face
discreetly hidden in a pocket handkerchief. The inscriptions, "Sacred to
the memory," etc., were written or printed upon the satin in India ink,
and often the letters of the name were worked with the hair of the
subject of the memorial.

In these pieces it is rather noticeable that the mourning figure is
always draped in white, which leads to the conclusion that it is a
purely emblematic figure of an emotion, rather than a real mourner. The
shading of the monument was generally done in India ink, so that the
actual embroidery was confined to the trunk and long branches of
weeping willow, and the dress of the figure, and the ground upon which
willow and monument and figure stand. The faces being always hidden by
the handkerchief, and a tinted satin serving for the sky, the execution
of these memorial pictures was comparatively simple. They certainly bear
an undue proportion to those happy family portraits where mother and
children, or husband and wife, sit in love and simplicity before the
pillared magnificence of the family mansion.

[Illustration: _Left_--FIRE SCREEN embroidered in cross-stitch worsted.
_From the McMullan family of Salem._

_Courtesy Essex Institute, Salem, Mass._

_Right_--FIRE SCREEN, design, "The Scottish Chieftain," embroidered in
cross-stitch by Mrs. Mary H. Cleveland Allen.

_Courtesy Essex Institute, Salem, Mass._]

[Illustration: FIRE SCREEN worked about 1850 by Miss C. A. Granger, of
Canandaigua, N. Y.]

Perhaps the greater simplicity and ease of execution of the mourning
pieces had something to do with their greater number. They may have been
the first spelling of the difficult art of pic