"Men courted and chose their wives for their modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other economical virtues then in reputation; and the young damsels were taught all these in the country and in their parents' houses. They had cupboards of ancient, useful plate, whole chests of damask for tables, and stores of fine Holland sheets, white as the driven snow, and fragrant of rose and lavender for the bed; and the sturdy oaken bedstead and furniture of the house lasted one whole century; the shovel-board and other long tables, both in hall and parlour, were as fixed as the freehold; nothing was movable save joint-stools, the black jacks, silver tankards, and bowls.... The virgins and young ladies of that golden age, _quæsiverunt lanam et linum_, put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained they the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the managery of the family, and gave presages of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, and their recreations in the distillatory, the knowledge of plants and their virtues, for the comfort of their poor neighbours and use of their family, which wholesome, plain diet and kitchen physic preserved in perfect health." As the quaint old ballad hath it-- "They wore shoes of a good broad heel, And stockings of homely blue; And they spun them upon their own wheel, When this old hat was new." PINS AND PIN-MONEY. Metal pins are said to have been introduced into this country from France in the fifteenth century: as an article of commerce they are not mentioned in our statutes until the year 1483. Before this date, we are told that ladies were accustomed to fasten their dresses by means of skewers of boxwood, ivory, or bone; this statement has been doubted, but we are assured that, to this day, the Welsh use as a pin the thorn from the hedge. Stow assigns the first manufacture of metal pins in England to the year 1543; and they seem to have been then so badly made that in the thirty-fourth year of King Henry VIII. (1542-3), Parliament enacted that none should be sold unless they be "double-headed, and have the headdes soudered faste to the shanke of the pynne." In short, the head of the pin was to be well smoothed, the shank well shapen, and the point well rounded, filed, canted, and sharpened. The Act of Parliament, however, appears to have produced no good effect, for in the thirty-seventh year of the same reign it was repealed.