The stitches exemplifying the mode of darning damask, cambric, or linen had usually a sampler entirely devoted to them, and at one period--the end of the eighteenth century--it seems to have been a fairly general custom that a girl should work one as a companion to the ordinary sampler of lettering and patterns. The specimen darns on such a sampler are, as a rule, arranged in squares or crosses round some centre device, a bouquet or basket of flowers for instance, or it may be merely the initials of the worker in a shield. The two samplers (Fig. 76 and Plate XXIV.) are typical examples of their kind, although perhaps the ornamental parts of the designs are a little more fanciful than in the majority of those met with. [Illustration: FIG. 75.--BACK-STITCH: ENLARGEMENT OF PORTION OF SAMPLER IN FIG. 5. 17TH CENTURY. TWICE ACTUAL SIZE.] The best worked--not necessarily the most elaborately embellished--of this particular class of sampler has small pieces of the material actually cut out and the holes filled up with darning, but in inferior ones the stuff is left untouched, and the darn is simply worked on the linen, tammy cloth, or tiffany itself. This is a very much easier method and the appearance is better; but the darns so made are, after all, but imitations of the real thing. For the damask darns fine silk of two colours is invariably used, and in the properly worked examples both sides are alike, save, of course, for the reversal of the damask effect, as in woven damask. The centre designs in the two samplers illustrated are worked in fine darning-stitches of divers kinds, outlined with chain and stem stitches. Here and there a few other stitches are introduced, as in the stem of the rose in Fig. 76, where French knots are used to produce the mossy appearance. The centre basket in this sampler is worked in lines of chain-stitching crossing each other lattice fashion. Both the samplers have the initials of their workers, and in that shown in Fig. 76 the date (1802) also, neatly darned into one of the crosses formed by the damask patterns. Darning-samplers are usually square, or nearly square, in shape, and are simply finished with a single line of hem-stitching at the edge, but some of the older ones are ornamented with a broader band of drawn-work as border; while a few have examples of drawn-work, alternating with squares and crosses of darning, in the body of the sampler. A small section of such a sampler, dated 1785, is illustrated on an enlarged scale in Fig. 77. It has a series of small conventional leaf patterns worked in single drawn-work, and edged with a scalloping worked in chain-stitch with green silk. The ground of this particular sampler is thin linen, but the muslin-like stuff known as tiffany is that used for the foundation of nine darning-samplers out of ten. Tent and Cross Stitches