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 open-work 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 families 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. [Illustration: Old Lace Pillow, Reels and Pockets] 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 embroidered down upon fine linen lawn. I have infants' caps of this beautiful work, finer than any needlework of to-day. CHAPTER XVII GAMES AND PASTIMES _The plays of children are nonsense--but very educative nonsense._ _--Essay on Experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860._ There are no more striking survivals of antiquity than the games and pastimes of children. We have no historians of old-time 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 mediæval days. The chronicler Froissart, in _L'Espinette Amoureuse_, tells of the sports of his early life, over five centuries ago:--