They who look with most pleasure on a finished work, are oft-times most easily wearied with tracing the slow footsteps of the patient laborer. The reader would tire of this faithful chronicle if called to watch the gradual progress of Barbara Uttman’s schemes of wide spread good. By unwearied toil she made herself acquainted with the means of perfecting the new manufacture, which offered to her prophetic spirit a means of livelihood to the feebler portion of the poor. Going on from one improvement to another, she finally invented the cushion, the bobbins, and the pins, by which hand-woven lace is wrought with such perfect symmetry and regularity of fabric and design as make it, even now, the costliest of all the trappings of wealth. Then—when the invention was perfected—by offering premiums to those who would engage in the work, by establishing manufactories in her own domain, by precept and example, and all the varied means of influence which wealth and virtue had placed within her power, she established the weaving of lace as the especial employment of the women of Saxony. Thousands of maidens have found their sole support in this employment, and for nearly three hundred years the name of Barbara Uttman has been revered as the “mother” of many daughters, and the benefactress of the women of more than one nation in Europe. * * * * * Gentle reader, I have beguiled you with no fictitious tale. In the church-yard of the little mountain hamlet of Anneberg lie the remains of Barbara Uttman, who was born in 1514, married in 1531 to Christopher Uttman, a rich mine-owner, and died a widow in 1575. A visit to a long-disused shaft in a mine, where the spiders’ had woven their webs for fifty years, gave her the first idea of that beautiful fabric, which, under the various names of Mechlen, Valenciennes, and Brussels lace, makes the choicest of all additions to a lady’s toilet. It is said that since her establishment of its manufacture in 1560, upwards of a million of women are supposed to have obtained a comfortable livelihood by this species of employment. Notwithstanding the general introduction of a much inferior kind of lace, which is woven by machinery, at least twenty thousand women in Europe, annually obtain their support from the manufacture of hand-woven lace. With the far-seeing spirit of true philanthropy a woman thus solved for her country the problem which statesmen yet cavil over, and by affording the poor a means of humble independence, rescued the females of her own land from want and destitution. Yet how few of those who deck themselves with lace, only less costly than diamonds, have ever heard the name of Barbara Uttman! * * * * * SUNSET UPON “THE STEINE-KILL.” BY KATE DASHWOOD.