Inscriptions having an Interest owing to their Quaintness
The following dates from 1740, and has as appendix the line, “God prosper the war”:—
“The sick man fasts because he cannot eat
The poor man fasts because he hath no meat
The miser fasts to increase his store
The glutton fasts because he can eat no more
The hypocrite fasts because he’d be condemned
The just man fasts cause he hath offended.”
An American version of this ends with:—
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow
We have meat enow.”
That self-conceit was not always considered a failing, is evident from the following verses:—
“This needlework of mine may tell
That when a child I learned well
And by my elders I was taught
Not to spend my time for nought,”
which is concentrated and intensified in one of Frances Johnson, worked in 1797:—
“In reading this if any faults you see
Mend them yourself and find no fault in me.”
In a much humbler strain is this from an old sampler in Mrs Longman’s collection:—
“When I was young I little thought
That wit must be so dearly bought
But now experience tells me how
If I must thrive, then I must bowe
And bend unto another will,
That I might learn both arte & skill.”
Owing to the portrayal of an insect, which was not infrequently met with in days gone by, upon the face of the sampler which bears the following lines, it has been suggested that they were presumably written by that creature:—
“Dear Debby
I love you sincerely
My heart retains a grateful sense of your past kindness
When will the hours of our
Separation be at an end?
Preserve in your bosom the remembrance
of your affectionate
Deborah Jane Berkin.”
The following, coming about the date when the abolition of the slave trade was imminent, may have reference to it:—
“THERE’S mercy in each ray of light, that mortal eye e’er saw,
There’s mercy in each breath of air, that mortal lips can draw,
There’s mercy both for bird, and beast, in God’s indulgent plan,
There’s mercy for each creeping thing—But man has none for man.”
Elizabeth Jane Gates Aged 12 years, 1829.
Riddle samplers, such as that of Ann Witty, do not often occur:—
| “I had both | Money | and a | Friend | by both I set great store |
| I lent my | to my | and took his word therefor | ||
| I asked my | of my | and nought but words I got | ||
| I lost my | and my | for sue him, I would not.” |
Here, too, is an “Acrostick,” the first letters of whose lines spell the name of the young lady who “ended” it “Anno Dom. 1749.”
“A virgin that’s Industrious Merits Praise,
Nature she Imitates in Various Ways,
Now forms the Pink, now gives the Rose its blaze.
Young Buds, she folds, in tender Leaves of green,
Omits no shade to beautify her Scene,
Upon the Canvas, see, the Letters rise,
Neatly they shine with intermingled dies,
Glide into Words, and strike us with Surprize.”
E. W.
As illustrations of tales the sampler of Sarah Young ([Fig. 15]) is an unusual example. It deals with Sir Richard Steele’s story of the loves of Inkle and Yarico. Inkle, represented as a strapping big sailor, was cast away in the Spanish Main, where he met and loved Yarico, an Indian girl, but showed his baseness by selling her for a slave when he reached Barbadoes in a vessel which rescued him. The story evidently had a considerable, if fleeting, popularity, for it was dramatised.