In the morning I am going to look at some Instruments; however we got one picked out that I imagine we shall take, 150 dollars, a charming toned one and not made in this country.
In June she said enthusiastically of her “Instrument:”—
I am learning my 12th tune Oh Octavia, I almost worship my Instrument,—it reciprocates my joys and sorrows, and is my bosom companion. How I long to have you return! I have hardly attempted to sing since you went away. I am sure I shall not dare to when you return. I must enjoy my triumph while you are absent; my musical talents will be dim when compared with the lustre of yours.
The most universal accomplishment of colonial women was the making of samplers, if, indeed, anything could be termed an accomplishment which was so rigidly and prosaically part of their education. I can well imagine the disgrace it would have been to any little miss in her teens a century ago not to be able to show a carefully designed and wrought sampler. On these samplers were displayed the alphabet, sometimes in various shaped letters—thus did she learn to mark neatly her household linen; bands of conventional designs, of flowers, of geometrical patterns—thus was she taught to embroider muslin caps and kerchiefs; and there were gorgeous flowers and strange buildings, and domestic scenes, and pastoral views, birds that perched as large as cows, and roses that were larger than either; and last and best of all (and often of much satisfaction to the genealogist), there was her name and her age, and sometimes her place of birth, and withal a pious verse as a motto for this housewifely shield. Of all the relics of old-time life which have come to us, none are more interesting than the samplers. Happily, many of them have come to us; worked with wiry enduring crewels and silk on strong linen canvas, they speak down through the century of the little, useful, willing hands that worked them; of the tidy sempstresses and housewives of those simple domestic days. We know little of the daughters of the Pilgrims, but Lora Standish has sent to us a prim little message of her piety, and a faded testimony of her skill, that makes her seem dear to us:—
Lora Standish is My Name.
Lord Guide my heart that I may do thy Will
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill
As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame,
And I will give the Glory to Thy Name.
A more ambitious kind of needlework took the form of what were known as mourning pieces. These were regarded with deepest affection, for were they not a token of loving remembrance? They bore stiff presentments of funeral urns, with drooping willows, or a monument with a bowed and weeping figure. Often the names of dead members of the family were worked upon the monument. A still more ambitious sampler bore a design known as The Tree of Life. A stiffly branched tree was sparingly hung with apples labelled with the names of the virtues of humanity, such as Love, Honor, Truth, Modesty, Silence. A white-winged angel on one side of this tree watered the roots with a very realistic watering-pot, and was balanced with exactness, as were evenly adjusted all good embroidery designs of that day, by an inky-black Satan who bore a pitchfork of colossal proportions and a tail as long as a kite’s, and so heavy that he could scarce have dragged it along the ground—much less with it have flown.