torial embroidery. The
best of these picture embroideries were certainly wonderful creations as
far as the use of the needle was concerned, and I fancy were done in the
large leisure of some colonial home where early distinction in the art
of needlework must have gone hand in hand with the skill of the
traveling portrait painter. These dainty productions, with their
delicately painted faces and hands, are far more often found than those
with embroidered flesh. In some of these, faces painted with real
miniature skill upon bits of parchment have been inserted or
superimposed upon the satin, the edges, as I have said, carefully
covered by embroidery, done with single hair threaded into the needle
instead of silk. In one case which I remember, the yellow hair of a
child was knotted into a bunch of solid looking curls covering the head
of a small figure, while the face of the mother was surmounted by bands
of a reddish brown. This little touch of realism gave a curious note of
pathos to the picture of a life separated from the present by time and
outgrown habits, but linked to it by this one tangible proof of actual
existence.

The drawing or plan of these pictures was evidently done directly upon
the satin ground, as one often finds the outlines showing at the edge of
the stitches; but in the few specimens I have found where they were
worked upon linen it had been covered with a tracing on strong thin
paper, and the entire design worked through and over both paper and
canvas. Those which were done upon linen seemed to belong to an earlier
period than those worked on satin, which was perhaps an American
adaptation of the earlier method. Certainly the soft thick India satin,
which was the ground of so many of them, made a delightful surface for
embroidery, and blended with its colors into a silvery mass where work
and background were equally effective. Two of these have survived the
century or more of careful seclusion which followed the proud eclat of
their production. One of the fortunate heirs to many of these exhibited
treasures told me of a package or book containing heads in water color,
evidently to be used as copies for the faces which might be found
necessary for efforts in embroidery. The painting of these was perhaps a
part of the education or accomplishment considered necessary to girls of
prominent and successful families of the day.

Under favorable circumstances, such as a convenient relation between
artist