REPORTS. 



DEPARTMENT OP FANCY ARTICLES. 



It seems- to bo the custom, iu these times, to rake up the 

 past and harrow up our feelings in regard to the quantity of 

 work done by the Pilgrim mothers, so we wondered what they 

 would have said if they had looked into the hall of the 

 Agricultural Society, last September, and seen the display of 

 fancy articles, so tastefully arranged. 



If the Plymouth Colony could have had the time for a 

 "cattle show," the women would have brought home-spun 

 yarn and "linsey-woolsey," or their linen and woolen blankets, 

 with perhaps a sampler, with its letters, motto, and sometimes 

 a house worked upon it, iu cross-stitch, as a specimen of 

 their fancy work. Their ideas of home were well-sanded 

 floors, brightly shining porringers, andirons and candlesticks, 

 with festoons of dried apples, strings of red peppers, and 

 crooked-neck squashes for interior decoration, but now the 

 farmer's wife is urged to adorn her home with pictures and 

 flowers, to make it attractive to her family. In the depart- 

 ments of fruit and vegetables all were surprised to find such 

 a display, in spite of late spring and dry summer, but the 

 exhibitors of fancy articles can have neither weather nor sea- 

 sou as an excuse for a poor exhibition, — only their own tastes 

 aft'ect it. 



