In the older samplers little attention is paid to the representation of things in their real colors; a green horse may balance a blue tree. And as flat tints were used there were few effects of light and shade, and no perspective. Distance is indicated by a different color of worsted; thus the green horse will have his off legs worked in red. This is precisely the method used in the Bayeux Tapestry and other antique embroideries.
Sampler verses had their times and seasons, and ran through families. They were eagerly copied for young friends, and, in a few cases, were "natural composures"—or, as we should say to-day, "original compositions." Ruth Gray of Salem embroidered on her sampler a century ago:—
"Next unto God, dear Parents, I address
Myself to you in humble Thankfulness.
For all your Care and Charge on me bestow'd,
The means of learning unto me allowed.
Go on! I pray, and let me still Pursue
Such Golden Arts the Vulgar never knew."
To show the extent to which those lines could be transmitted let me state that they are found on a sampler in Dorchester, Massachusetts, worked in 1802, one in Waltham, Massachusetts, one worked in 1813 in a seminary in Boston, one in Medford, one worked in 1790 in Salem by a young girl of ten, another in Lynn, on an English sampler in the Kensington Museum, and in the diary of that Boston schoolgirl, Anna Green Winslow, dated 1771.
There were certain variants of a popular sampler verse that ran thus:—
"This is my Sampler,
Here you see
What care my Mother
Took of me."
Another rhyme was:—
"Mary Jackson is my name,
America my nation,
Boston is my dwelling place,
And Christ is my salvation."
The doxology, "From all that dwell below the skies," etc., appears on samplers; and these lines:—
"Though life is fair
And pleasure young,
And Love on ev'ry
Shepherd's Tongue,
I turn my thoughts
To serious things,
Life is ever on the wing."