“I think I have learned to be happy in the love of home, and I shall delight in trying to repay the long forbearance and gentleness of my _Step-Mother_.” * * * * * =SHAWLS.= =FROM HOUSEHOLD WORDS.= In that part of Asia, where some of our brave countrymen have penetrated only to die--in that country where Charles Stoddart and his friend Conolly, whose faces will never be forgotten by some of us, and whose voices still sound in our ears, consoled each other through a loathsome imprisonment, and went out together to lose their heads in the market-place of the capital; in that distant and impracticable country of Bokhara, which we are ready to say we will never have any connection with--there are people always employed in our service. We are not now thinking of the Bokhara clover, which is such a treat to our cows and horses. We owe that, and lucerne, and others of our green crops, to the interior of Asia; but we are thinking of something more elaborate. In Bokhara, the camel is watched while the fine hair on the belly is growing: this fine hair is cut off so carefully that not a fibre is lost; it is put by until there is enough to spin into a yarn, unequalled for softness, and then it is dyed all manner of bright colors, and woven in strips eight inches wide of shawl patterns, such as--with all our pains and cost, with all our Schools of Design, and study of nature and art--we are not yet able to rival. These strips are then sewn together so cunningly that no European can discover the joins. The precious merchandise is delivered to traders who receive it on credit. On their return from market, they pay the price of the shawls at the Bokhara value, with 30 per cent. interest; or, if they cannot do this in consequence of having been robbed, or of any other misfortune, they stay away, and are never seen again in their native land. Where is this market?--So far away from home that the traders wear out their clothes during their journey, and their fair skins become as brown as mulattoes. On, on, on they go, day after day, month after month, on their pacing camels or beside them, over table-lands mounting one above another; over grass, among rocks, over sand, through snows; now chilled to the marrow by icy winds; now scorched by sunshine, from which there is no shelter but the flat cotton caps with which they thatch their bare crowns: on, on, for fifteen thousand miles, to the borders of Russia, to sell the shawls which are to hang on ladies’ shoulders in Hyde Park, and where beauties most do congregate in Paris and Vienna.