"Better by Far for Me Than all the Simpsters Art That God's commandments be Embroider'd on my Heart." _Mary Cole_, 1759. Verses to be used upon rising in the morning or at bedtime are not unfrequent; the following is the modest prayer of Jane Grace Marks (1807). "If I am right, oh teach my heart Still in the right to stay, If I am wrong, thy grace impart To find that better way." But one in my possession loses, by its ludicrousness, all the impressiveness which was intended:-- "Oh may thy powerful word Inspire a breathing worm To rush into thy kingdom Lord To take it as by storm. Oh may we all improve Thy grace already given To seize the crown of love And scale the mount of heaven." _Sarah Beckett_, 1798. Lastly, a prayer for the teacher:-- "Oh smile on those whose liberal care Provides for our instruction here; And let our conduct ever prove We're grateful for their generous love." _Emma Day_, 1837. Verses Referring to Life and Death The fact that "Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less" appears seldom or never to have entered into the minds of those who set the verses for young sampler workers. From the earliest days when they plied their needle their thoughts were directed to the shortness of life and the length of eternity, and many a healthy and sweet disposition must have run much chance of being soured by the morbid view which it was forced to take of the pleasures of life. For instance, a child of seven had the task of broidering the following lines:-- "And now my soul another year Of thy short life is past I cannot long continue here And this may be my last." And one, no older, is made to declare that:-- "Thus sinners trifle, young and old, Until their dying day, Then would they give a world of gold To have an hour to pray." Or:-- "Our father ate forbidden Fruit, And from his glory fell; And we his children thus were brought To death, and near to hell." Or again:-- "There's not a sin that we commit Nor wicked word we say But in thy dreadful book is writ Against the judgment day." A child was not even allowed to wish for length of days. Poor little Elizabeth Raymond, who finished her sampler in 1789, in her eighth year, had to ask:-- "Lord give me wisdom to direct my ways I beg not riches nor yet length of days My life is a flower, the time it hath to last Is mixed with frost and shook with every blast." A similar idea runs through the following:-- "Gay dainty flowers go simply to decay, Poor wretched life's short portion flies away; We eat, we drink, we sleep, but lo anon Old age steals on us never thought upon." Not less lugubrious is Esther Tabor's sampler, who, in 1771, amidst charming surroundings of pots of roses and carnations, intersperses the lines:--