trees. Most of the old families possessed framed pieces of embroidery, the handiwork of female ancestors." Pride in needlework, and a longing for household decoration, found expression in quilt-piecing. Bits of calico "chiney" or chintz were carefully shaped by older hands, and sewed by diligent little fingers into many fanciful designs. A Job's Trouble, made of hexagon pieces, could be neatly done by little children, but more complicated designs required more "judgement," and the age of a little daughter might be accurately guessed by her patchwork. The quilt-making was the work of older folk. It required long arms, larger hands, greater strength. Knitting was taught to little girls as soon as they could hold the needles. Girls four years of age could knit stockings and mittens. In country households young damsels knit mittens to sell and coarse socks. Many fine and beautiful stitches were taught, and a beautiful pair of long silk stockings of openwork design has initials knit on the instep. They were the wedding hose of a bride of the year 1760; and the silk for them was raised, wound, and spun by the bride's sister, a girl of fourteen, who also did the exquisite knitting. Lace-making was never an industry in the colonies; it was an elegant accomplishment. Pillow lace was made, and the stitches were taught in fami lies of wealth; a guinea a stitch was charged by some teachers. Old lace pillows have been preserved to this day, with strips of unfinished lace and hanging bobbins, to show the kind of lace which was the mode a thread lace much like the fine Swiss hand made laces. Tambour Tambour work on muslin or lace, and a lace made of certain designs darned on net, took the place of pillow lace. Nothing could be more beautiful in execution and design than the rich veils, collars, and caps of this worked net, which remained the mode during the early years of this century. Girls spent years working on a single collar or tucker. Sometimes medallions of this net lace were em broidered down upon fine linen lawn. ful work, finer than any needlework of CHAPTER XVII GAMES AND PASTIMES The plays of children are nonsense· T Essay on Experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860. HERE are no more striking survivals of antiquity than the games and pastimes of children. We have no historians of oldtime child life to tell us of these games, but we can get side glimpses of that life which reveal to us, as Ruskin says, more light than a broad stare. Many of these games were originally religious observances; but there are scores that in their present purpose of simple amusement date from medieval days. The chronicler Froissart, in L'Espinette Amoureuse, tells of the sports of his early life, over five centuries ago:— "The children of our street" has a delightfully familiar ring. He also names many familiar games, such as playing ball, ring, prisoner's base, riddles, and blowing soap-bubbles. Top-spinning was an ancient game, even in Froissart's day, having been played in old Rome and the Orient since time immemorial. It is interesting to note the persistent survival of games which are seldom learned from printed rules, but are simply told from child to child from year to year. On the sidewalk, in front of my house, is now marked out with chalk the lines for a game of hop-scotch and a group of children are, playing it, precisely |