unfortunate sisters,
who were rather malodorously called decayed gentlewomen, became eager
and petted pupils of a new and popular organization called the South
Kensington School. Its peculiar claims upon English society gave it from
the first the help of the most advanced and intelligent artistic
assistance. The result of this was not only a resuscitation of old
methods of embroidery, but the great gain to the school, or society, of
design and criticism of such men as Burne-Jones, Walter Crane, and
William Morris.

It was with this vogue that it appeared in America, and attracted the
attention of those who were afterward to be interested in the formation
of a society which was founded for almost identical purposes. Not indeed
to prevent starvation of body, but to comfort the souls of women who
pined for independence, who did not care to indulge in luxuries which
fathers and brothers and husbands found it hard to supply. So, from what
was perhaps a social and mental, rather than a physical, want, grew the
great remedy of a resuscitation of one of the valuable arts of the
world, a woman's art, hers by right of inheritance as well as peculiar
fitness.

With true business enterprise, the new English Society prepared an
important exhibit for our memorial fair, the Centennial, held in
Philadelphia to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of national
independence. This exhibit of Kensington Embroidery all unwittingly
sowed the seed not only of great results, but in decorative art worked
in many other directions. The exhibits of art needlework from the New
Kensington School of Art in London, their beauty, novelty and easy
adaptiveness, exactly fitted it to experiment by all the dreaming
forces of the American woman. They were good needlewomen by inheritance
and sensitive to art influences by nature, and the initiative capacity
which belongs to power and feeling enabled them at once to seize upon
this mode of expression and make it their own. It was the means of
inaugurating another era of true decorative needlework, perfectly
adapted to the capacity of all women, and destined to be developed on
lines peculiarly national in character. The effect of this exhibit was
not exactly what was expected in the sale of its works, and long
afterward, when discussing this apparent failure, in the face of an
immediate adoption in America of the Society's methods and productions,
I explained it to myself and an English friend, by the national