a ground of silk of
the pinky-ash color, once known as "ashes of roses." The real charm
of the thing, that which lends it a tender romance, is the legend worked
upon the back of the cushion in brown silk stitches which are easily
mistaken for the round-hand copperplate writing of the period--"Wrought
where the peaceful Lehi flows." One seems to breathe the very air of the
secluded valley, peopled by brethren and sisters set apart from the
strenuous duties of the builders of a new nation, and distinguished for
learned and devoted effort toward the perfection of moral, and
spiritual, rather than the conquests of material, life.

The Sisters had many orders from the outside world, as well as from
visitors, and the profit upon these helped to maintain the school. Many
of these orders were in the shape of pocketbooks, pincushions, bags,
etc., having a bunch, or wreath, or cluster of flowers on one side,
wonderfully wrought in silken flosses or sewing silks, and on the other,
some pretty sentiment or legend done in dark brown floss in the most
perfect of "round-hand"; so perfect, in fact, that it would require the
closest scrutiny to decide that it was not handwritten script.

These plentiful orders for things were induced by the several
attractions of the situation, the remoteness from warlike and political
disturbances, and the relationship of so many young girl lives, as well
as the interest which attached to the school and community, making a
constant demand in the shape of small articles of use or luxury,
decorated by the skillful fingers of the Sisters.

Parallel with this fine practice of flower embroidery, was a period of
far more important needlework, which we may call Picture Embroidery.
This also owed its introduction to the Moravian School of Bethlehem,
although it was probably of early English origin, going back to that
period when English embroidery was the wonder of the world; and the
_opus plumarium_, or feather-pen stitch, or tent stitch, or Kensington
stitch, as it has been known in succeeding ages, first attracted
attention as a medium of art.

Passing from England to Germany it became purely ecclesiastical, and
even now one occasionally finds in Germany, and less often in England,
bits of ecclesiastical embroidery of unimaginable fineness,
commemorating Christ's miracles and other incidents of Bible history. I
know of one small specimen of ancient English art, covering a space of
five by seven inches,