hing the closely packed
iron-bound chests which held most of the worldly goods of the traversing
pilgrims--those famous chests, the boards of which had been carefully
doweled and faithfully put together to resist outward and inward
pressure--packed and repacked with constant misgivings and hopeful
foresight. In those crowded treasure chests it was possible there might
be found skeins of crewel, and even working patterns which some hopeful
instinct had prompted her to preserve.

While the Puritan mother was scheming to add embroidery to her
occupations, she did not forget to train each small maid of the family
to the use of the needle. Ruth and Peace and Harmony and Mercy made
their samplers as faithfully as though they were growing up under the
shade of the apple trees of old England instead of among the blackened
stumps of newly cut forests.

So the old art survived its transplantation and rooted itself in spite
of storms of terror, and during and after the test of fire and blood,
and spread, after the manner of art and knowledge, until it became the
joy and comfort of a new race, a vehicle of feminine dexterity and an
expression of the creative instinct with which in a greater or lesser
degree we are all endowed.

We can easily believe that stores of linen and precious china, as well
as the small wheels for the spinning of the flax, could not be denied to
the devoted women who chose to share the hard fortunes of their Pilgrim
husbands and fathers. It is probable that in one form or another
possessions of crewel embroidery were transported with them.

I know of no well-authenticated specimen which came in actual substance
in that elastic vessel, but undoubtedly there were such, while many and
many existed in the minds and memories of the women of the new colony,
to come to life and take on actual form, color and substance when the
days of their privations were numbered. If such actual treasured things
existed and were preserved through the early days of colonial life,
every stitch of them would hold within itself traditions of tranquillity
in a world where homes stood, and fields were tilled in safety, because
of the vast plains of ocean which lay between them and savage tribes.

In the earliest days of the colonies we could hardly expect more than
the necessary practice of the needle, but when we come to the second
period, when neighborhoods became towns, and cabins grew into more or
less well-equipped farmhouses