The most universal accomplishment of colonial women was the making of samplers, if, indeed, anything could be termed an accomplishment which was so rigidly and prosaically part of their education. I can well imagine the disgrace it would have been to any little miss in her teens a century ago not to be able to show a carefully designed and wrought sampler. On these samplers were displayed the alphabet, sometimes in various shaped letters--thus did she learn to mark neatly her household linen; bands of conventional designs, of flowers, of geometrical patterns--thus was she taught to embroider muslin caps and kerchiefs; and there were gorgeous flowers and strange buildings, and domestic scenes, and pastoral views, birds that perched as large as cows, and roses that were larger than either; and last and best of all (and often of much satisfaction to the genealogist), there was her name and her age, and sometimes her place of birth, and withal a pious verse as a motto for this housewifely shield. Of all the relics of old-time life which have come to us, none are more interesting than the samplers. Happily, many of them _have_ come to us; worked with wiry enduring crewels and silk on strong linen canvas, they speak down through the century of the little, useful, willing hands that worked them; of the tidy sempstresses and housewives of those simple domestic days. We know little of the daughters of the Pilgrims, but Lora Standish has sent to us a prim little message of her piety, and a faded testimony of her skill, that makes her seem dear to us:-- Lora Standish is My Name. Lord Guide my heart that I may do thy Will Also fill my hands with such convenient skill As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame, And I will give the Glory to Thy Name. A more ambitious kind of needlework took the form of what were known as mourning pieces. These were regarded with deepest affection, for were they not a token of loving remembrance? They bore stiff presentments of funeral urns, with drooping willows, or a monument with a bowed and weeping figure. Often the names of dead members of the family were worked upon the monument. A still more ambitious sampler bore a design known as The Tree of Life. A stiffly branched tree was sparingly hung with apples labelled with the names of the virtues of humanity, such as Love, Honor, Truth, Modesty, Silence. A white-winged angel on one side of this tree watered the roots with a very realistic watering-pot, and was balanced with exactness, as were evenly adjusted all good embroidery designs of that day, by an inky-black Satan who bore a pitchfork of colossal proportions and a tail as long as a kite’s, and so heavy that he could scarce have dragged it along the ground--much less with it have flown.