Two years ago a lady who can make all sorts of laces heard of these poor young children, and knowing how well little fingers are suited to weaving, kindly lent her own cushions and bobbins for their use, and came down and gave them lessons every week.
Some of the girls, especially the Genoese, were delighted to enter the class, and although they could not work rapidly—that takes considerable practice—they learned very soon to form flowers and leaves for "duchesse" lace.
One little girl was very anxious to enter too, but no one encouraged her; so of course she had nothing to work with. What do you think she did? Give it up? No; being a small genius in her way, she made herself a cushion no larger than a breakfast plate, and cut out a number of little bobbins from pieces of rough wood; then with ordinary spool cotton actually contrived to weave three different stitches.
Luigina Gardella—that is the little genius's name—can now work seventy or eighty bobbins at a time. What do you think of that?
I must tell you also how ambitious another child was. Little Angevini Brizzolari desired to "learn lace" too, but was obliged every day to help her mother at the fruit stand; so she would come in the morning for her lesson, and then carry away her cushion and bobbins, and when she was not busy selling bananas and oranges, there she sat weaving lace in the street.
LACE-MAKERS.
Little Agostina Valente, bending over her cushion so earnestly, engaged in giving her sister a lesson, has been more fortunate, and is now an expert weaver, frequently working more than one hundred bobbins for a single pattern.
The Valentes were born in one of the mountain villages just outside the beautiful city of Genoa. Their mother will tell you, with sparkling eyes, how, dressed in her best homespun blue and red linen gown, with a fine brooch fastening her yellow kerchief, she used to bring the babies down to see the Carnival.
Neither Agostina nor Carlotta remembers the marble palaces and bell towers, nor when they had the honor of bearing the white palms in the procession on Palm-Sunday, for their memory extends no further than the time when they were in the "big ship crossing the great water."