Samplers Expatiating upon Virtue or Vice, Wealth or Poverty, Happiness or Misery
Amongst these may be noted:—
“Happy is he, the only man,
Who out of choice does all he can
Who business loves and others better makes
By prudent industry and pains he takes.
God’s blessing here he’ll have and man’s esteem,
And when he dies his works will follow him.”
Of those dealing with wealth or poverty none, perhaps, is more incisive than this:—
“The world’s a city full of crooked streets,
And Death’s the market-place where all men meet;
If life was merchandise that men could buy
The rich would always live, the poor alone would die.”
An American sampler has the following from Burns’s “Grace before Meat”:—
“Some men have meat who cannot eat
And some have none who need it.
But we have meat and we can eat,
And so the Lord be thanked.”
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Plate VIII.—Sampler by Mary Postle. Dated 1747.
Mrs C. J. Longman.
An early specimen of a bordered Sampler, dated 1747, the rows being relegated to a small space in the centre, where they are altogether an insignificant feature in comparison with the border. Some of the ornament to which we have been accustomed in the rows survives, as for instance the pinks, but a new one is introduced, namely, the strawberry. Here are also the Noah’s Ark animals, trees, etc., which henceforward become common objects and soon transform the face of the Sampler. The border itself is in evident imitation of the worsted flower work with which curtains, quilts, and other articles were freely adorned in the early eighteenth century.