But supposing that your daughter does not marry at all, still her knowledge of plain-work will not be thrown away upon her. If left poorly off, she has her own clothes to make and mend, and if not, surely there are plenty of claims upon her. There is her more fortunate sister, who married young, and is now a widow, with six children on her hands—think of the comfort and use her needle may be to them! Then her brothers are [{742}] most of them married with families, and Aunt Susan's work is invaluable, If she has no brothers or sisters, but is left entirely alone in the world, and so well off that she does not require to work for herself, let her turn to the poor, and give them the use of her needle; she will certainly find a never-ending field amongst them. By the time she has worked for all the babies in the parish, and helped the mothers about the clothes for the elder children, she will find she has occupation enough for her fingers to keep her mind happy and interested, and to prevent her from dwelling upon her own loneliness. She can also spend some time profitably in instructing the girls in the village-school how to cut out and sew. The ignorance upon these points in some schools is perfectly lamentable. I took a nursery-maid for my eighth baby straight from a national school. She was a fine healthy girl of sixteen. It will hardly be credited that she could not hold her needle properly! She doubled it up in her hand, and pushed it into her work in the most extraordinary manner. I tried in vain to teach her by every means in my power, but if the knack of holding the needle is not learned in early life, it is rarely acquired afterward. Although so very awkward about her work, that girl had been taught to crochet ridiculous watch-pockets, and to knit impossible babies' shoes, with such wonderful pointed toes that no infant I ever saw could get his feet into them. At length I was obliged to part with her on this account, though a tidy, active girl, and satisfactory in many ways. She is not the only case I have had in my house of ignorance on the subject of plain-work. Some of my servants have been able to sew well enough, but have not had the remotest idea of cutting-out and placing their work. I have often thought, if I had only time to spare, how much I should like to teach the rising generation the little I myself know of the art of plain-work.
In these days of sewing-machines people think much less of needle-work than they did formerly. I don't approve of sewing-machines myself. My husband accuses me of being jealous of them, but in this he is unjust to me. I don't approve of them simply because I think that the work produced from them—though I grant that the stitches may be regular enough—cannot be compared to good hand-work, particularly when employed upon fine materials. I have seen machine-work in every stage, and from the very best sewing-machines, and I never could consider it equal to good hand-work. I feel convinced in my own mind that sewing-machines will have their day, and that when that day is over, plain-work done by hand will be at as high a premium again as ever. Even pillow-lace is now gradually recovering the place it once occupied in public estimation, and from which it was temporarily ousted by lace produced from that unutterable abomination, the machine, and which used to be called "Nottingham lace."
I acknowledge machine-work may be all very well for cloth clothes, and useful in families where there are many boys; but my ten children are mostly girls, and I don't at all covet a machine. My husband offers me one periodically, and I as often refuse it. I could not bear to have one in the house, it would be going so entirely against my own principles.
It is most important, when a girl is learning to work, that great care should be taken with her to prevent her from acquiring bad habits; such habits, I mean, as clicking her needle with her thimble, pinning her work to her knee, biting the end of her thread, and sticking her needle into the front of her dress. These habits once gained will probably stick to her all her life, and she will find the greatest difficulty in overcoming them. It is therefore advisable that she should be taught to work by her mother, rather than be left to the instruction of servants. A [{743}] ladylike manner of working is essential, and should be carefully cultivated, for work may be executed both neatly and rapidly without the acquirement of any of these vulgar peculiarities. A great point to be learned connected with plain-work, and one that I consider quite indispensable, is the art of cutting out accurately and without waste of material. Far too little importance is attached to that branch of work, and many women go to their graves without acquiring it, having been dependent all their lives upon their servants or some kind friend for having their work cut out and placed for them. When this is the case ladies are apt to be too much under the thumb of their ladies' maids or nurses, who are not slow to profit by their own superior knowledge, and domineer over their mistresses accordingly.
Where there are a number of the same articles of clothing to be made, it is advisable to cut out one garment first, being careful to take the pattern in paper, and to complete it before cutting out the rest of the material. By this means an opinion can be formed as to whether it fits properly and any necessary alterations may be made. The other articles may then be cut out all together, care being taken to pin the separate parts together, to avoid their being mislaid or any mistakes made. It is no doubt essential that sewing should be neatly done, but I think this need not be achieved at the entire expense of all rapidity of execution. It really is perfectly ludicrous to see some women at their work. They look at each stitch when completed, and give it a little approving pat with the top of the thimble; and at this rate, though the neatness of the work may be undeniable, still so little is accomplished, that it is hardly worth the trouble of doing it at all. Method in plain-work is also highly necessary, and much time and labor may be spared by keeping all the materials in the proper places. If every article when done with is put away carefully, it is sure to be forthcoming when again required. Thus, there is no time wasted in searching for a missing reel of cotton, or hunting up a pair of scissors. The cleanliness of the work is also thereby kept unimpaired.
The greatest care should be taken with the pieces of broken needles, which are too apt to be left carelessly about the floor, and which are most dangerous, especially when there are any young children in the house. I must confess, and I do it with shame, that there was a time when I was not as careful as I am now. I never shall forget my husband's indignation upon coming into my room one day, where our second baby was crawling about on the ground, at finding a piece of a broken needle in her hand, quite ready to put it in her mouth. I think he was more angry with me then than he had ever been before during our married life. It was certainly a good lesson to me, for I have been most careful ever since, and I'll trouble him or anybody else to find a broken needle about my carpet now. Waste should be carefully avoided, both with regard to ends of cotton and pieces of material. The scraps of the latter which are too small to be of any use, instead of being left littered about the room, should be thrown into a waste-basket, to be cleared by the housemaid, and the larger pieces should be tidily put away. The time will probably come when they will be required for some purpose or other; and if pinned up in a tight bundle they will not occupy much space in a drawer or basket kept for the purpose.
I trust I have not ridden my hobby to death, nor worn out the patience of my readers, but it is a subject the importance of which I strongly feel. It must not, however, be supposed that I advocate the cultivation of work to the exclusion of more intellectual pursuits, or that I wish to take the bread from the mouth of my poorer sister. I consider a thorough [{744}] knowledge of the science of plain-work to be essential to every woman, be she rich or poor, and that in it she will always find a sphere of usefulness. It will, if cultivated, turn out for her own benefit, and the comfort and happiness of those around her, and surely it shall be said of her that "her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."
THE BIRTHPLACE OF SAINT PATRICK.
BY J. CASHEL HOEY.
The question of the birthplace of St. Patrick—a question which has been debated with considerable learning and acrimony for several centuries—has always seemed to me to have an interest far beyond the rival claims of clans and the jealous litigation of the antiquary. It is interesting not merely because it is in reality a curious archaeological problem, but also because it may in some measure afford a clue to the character of one of the greatest saints and greatest men of his own age or of any other—a saint who was the apostle of a nation which he found all heathen and left all Christian; who succeeded in planting the Catholic faith without a single act of martyrdom, but planted it so firmly that it has never failed for now 1,400 years, though tried in what various processes of martyrdom God and man too well know; a saint whose apostolate was the mainspring of an endless succession of missionary enterprises, prosecuted with the same untiring zeal in the nineteenth century as in the fifth, wherever the vanguard of Christendom may happen to be found, whether in Austria, in Gaul, in Switzerland, or in Iceland, as now at the furthest confines of America and of Australasia. Add to these ordinary evidences of the supernatural efficacy of St. Patrick's mission the testimony which is derived from the peculiar spiritual character of the people that he converted. The Irish nation retains the impress which it received from the hands of St. Patrick in a way that I believe no other Christian nation has preserved the mould of its apostle. If that nation has never even dreamed of heresy or schism, it is because, in terms as positive as an ultramontane of our own days could devise, [Footnote 119] St. Patrick established the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff as a chief canon of the Irish Church. Patience in poverty, an innate love of purity, prodigal alms-giving, and mutual charities, the practice of heavy penances and of long fasts, a peculiarly vivid sense of purgatory, and a strong devotion to the doctrine of the Trinity, which the saint taught in the figure of the shamrock—these have always been the distinguishing characteristics of Irish piety. They were the peculiar characteristics of the Christian of the fourth century, who had not yet learned to live at peace with the world—who felt that as yet Christians were in the strictest sense one family community—who practised mortification, as if the untamed pagan [{745}] blood were still burning in his veins, and the great temptation to whose faith was the heresy of Arius, and the question of the relations of the three divine persons. But St. Patrick was not only a great saint—was not merely and simply the apostle of the Irish; he was their teacher and their lawgiver, their Cadmus and Lycurgus as well. The school of letters which he founded in Ireland so well preserved the learning which had become all but extinguished throughout western Europe, that your own Alfred, following a host of your nobles and clerics, went thither to be taught, and the universities of Paris and Pavia owe their earliest lights to Irish scholars. The Brehon laws, which are at last to be published, by order of Parliament, a complete code of the most minute and comprehensive character, were, according to the evidence of our annalists, carefully revised and remodelled by St. Patrick, with the consent of the different estates of the kingdom of Ireland; and there is good reason to believe that this revision, of which there is abundant intrinsic evidence, had reference not merely to the Christian doctrine and the canons of the Church, but to the body of the Roman civil law.