While it is not always an easy matter to assign undated samplers to their exact periods, approximate dates may without great trouble be determined. Naturally, the earliest examples were more utilitarian than ornamental in conception, more like a mere example of stitchery of various sorts--a leaf from the scrap-book of needlework, as it were. Later, pattern and design and pictorial composition were evolved. Likewise, the earlier samplers seem to have been longer and narrower in proportion than later ones. Threads of gold and silver are to be found in needle-work of the Elizabethan and the Jacobean period, where we should not look for them in the Georgian. Again, there are characteristics of pattern that clearly denote the embroiderer’s time. The design of the letters of the alphabet embroidered on a sampler also forms a clue, inasmuch as it shares in common with contemporary dated, printed, and engraved lettering the more distinctive period characteristics of the latter. The earliest date of an alphabet sampler is, I believe, 1643; of a sampler with a motto, 1651; of a sampler having a border, 1726; of a representation of a house, 1763; of numerals, 1655; of a verse, 1696; 1728 has been suggested as the approximate date of the introduction of mustard-colored canvases on which the samplers were worked. “Sad sewers made bad samplers,” said Lord de Tabley in “The Soldier of Fortune,” but the wonder is that the little fingers of yesterday should have acquired skill not only in one sort of embroidery but in the varied stitches often seen in a single sampler remarkable for its perfect and exquisite handiwork. One is almost aghast, for instance, at the task suggested by John Taylor’s “The Needles Excellency,” where one reads: Tent-worke, Raised-worke, Laid-worke, Frost-worke, Net-worke, Most curious purles or rare Italian Cut-worke, Fine Ferne-stitch, Finny-stitch, Hew-stitch and China-stitch, Brave Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch and Queen-stitch, The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Morose-stitch, The Smarting Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Cross-stitch. All these are good and these we must allow, And these are everywhere in practice now. With the infinitude of stitches it is not necessary here to be concerned, although the enthusiast in sampler-collecting will find the study of stitches helpful just as the expert will find it highly necessary. As there is much confusion in the nomenclature, there will be many stumbling-blocks, but the pursuit will be worth while. The earliest seventeenth-century samplers of lace-like appearance were worked in cut-and-drawn embroidery, with various additional lace stitches. Then there was the eyelet-stitch, damask-stitch, the backstitch (these three were used for alphabets), darning-stitches, tent-stitches, and tapestry-stitch (unusual) and so on.