her maple tree on the outside; it is
only that the wood is curly, just as some children have curly hair."
Even now, after all these years, a plane of curly maple suggests the
curly hair of some child beloved of nature.

The beautiful curly, spotted and satiny maple wood was, however, "out of
fashion" when the roving shipmasters began to bring in logs of Santo
Domingo mahogany in the holds of their far-wandering barks, and the
cabinetmakers to cut beautiful shapes of sideboards, and curving legs
and backs of chairs, as well as the tall carved headposts and the head
and footboards of luxurious beds from them. It was not only that they
were a repetition of English luxury, but that they made more of
themselves in plain white interiors, by reason of insistent color, than
the blond sisterhood of maples could do. Cherry, which shared in a
degree its depth of color, held its world for a longer period, but no
wood could withstand the magnificence of pure mahogany red, with the
story of its vegetable life written along its planes in lines and waves,
deepening into darks, and lightening into ocher and gold along its
surfaces.

If the cabinetry of New England is a digression, it is perhaps excusable
on the ground of its close connection with the crewel work of New
England, of which we are treating, and to which we shall have something
of a sense of novelty in returning, since at least the complexion of our
colonial embroidery has experienced a change.

So, in spite of the success of the early Puritan woman in producing
tints necessary to the various needs of colored crewelwork, the
supremacy of indigo as a dye led to a lasting fashion of embroidery
known as "blue-and-white." It was the assertion of absolute and tried
merit in materials which led to its success. We sometimes see this
emergence of persistent goodness in instances of some human career,
where indefatigable integrity outruns the glamour of personal gift. This
was the fortune of the "blue-and-white," which not only created a style,
but has achieved persistence and has broken out in revivals all along
the history of American embroidery. It has been somewhat identified with
domestic weaving, for the loom has always been a member of the New
England family, the great home-built loom, standing in the far end of
the kitchen, capable of divers miracles of creation between dawn and
sunset.

On this much-to-be-prized background of homespun linen the different
shades of indig