ingled with the love of good and
beautiful art, which were plainly visible. It had in all its flower
pieces, and they were many, the quality of beautiful charm. The ministry
of nature may have had something to do with this, since the lives of the
executants were open to its influences.

[Illustration: MORAVIAN EMBROIDERY from Louisville, Ky.]

One can make a mental picture of those early days beside the peaceful
"Lehi," where the Sisters taught and nurtured the young girls of very
young America, and trained them in such beautiful and womanly
accomplishments. The scattered bits of needlework which remain to us are
so fine, so clear, so thoroughly exhaustive of all excellence in
technique, that they are to the art of embroidery what the ivory
miniature is to painting. We cannot but hail the memory of the Sisters
of Bethlehem with respect and admiration.

I became familiar with the work of this community when I was arranging
an historic exhibition of American Embroidery for the Bartholdi Fair in
1883. Few people may remember that, among the means for the installation
of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty which welcomes the world at the
entrance to the harbor of New York, was an effort called the Bartholdi
Fair, held in the then almost new and very popular Academy of Design at
the northwestern corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street.
Knowing the value of Bethlehem work, I made an effort to secure a
representative collection, with the result of gathering a most
interesting group of specimens, mainly by the interest and help of Mr.
Henry Baldwin of Lehigh University, to whom I was referred for
assistance in my purpose. I have before me now the correspondence which
ensued, a most painstaking, kind and patient one on his part, giving me
much interesting history of the Bethlehem mission, as well as its life
and progress. Among the legends is one--that during our Revolutionary
war, Pulaski recruited some of his Legion at Bethlehem, and ordered a
banner, which was carried by his troops until he fell in the attack upon
Savannah. This banner is now in the rooms of the Maryland Historical
Society, and I find the question of its having been an order from Count
Pulaski, or a gift to the Legion, is one of very lively interest in the
community.

This exhibit of 1883 was as complete an historical collection of
American needlework as was possible, and I have a list of ten articles
loaned from collections in Bethlehem, which reads