Pillow lace was probably invented by Barbara Uttmann, in the middle of the sixteenth century. She lived in St. Annaberg, Germany, and was a woman of great natural ability. She was highly honored by the Saxons, who state with pride that when she died, at the age of sixty, she had seen sixty-four of her own children and grand-children. Point lace of the old sort was the highest form of needle art. Holy men of old gave their lives to architecture, believing they could give glory to God by work in stone beautifully carved and set in the walls of monasteries and cathedrals; so it happened that in the thirteenth century the works of their hands reached the highest point in architecture. So beautiful is their work even now that those who have studied the subject but little know the date of a building when they see its windows. But a century later the nuns had done something of the same sort. They had produced from the fine fibers of flax marvelous designs of fleecy lace fabrics that were the wonder of Christendom. Their art was buried with them. A point lace is made to-day, but it is far from the excellence of the original work, which was a constant prayer of those who gave their lives to the making of it. A Yankee boy of twenty, Erastus Bigelow, thought it would be a good thing to try to invent a way of making coachlace by machinery. In forty days he was producing lace at three cents a yard which had cost twenty-two cents. Then he invented a loom for ingrain carpets; this made eight yards a day instead of three that the looms of the time made. In making Brussels carpet he made his chief triumph. Seven yards a day was considered a good day's work, but he made a machine that produced twenty-five yards of much better quality in the same time. He received one hundred thousand dollars for his patents. The body of Brussels carpet is built on a foundation of linen. THE SYCAMORE WARBLER. BELLE P. DRURY.