The Happy Garden 



her enthusiasm over the achievement ; unless the 

 verse is a pure convention : 



" jfHarg ,jf Iffttoooti is mg name, 

 Mis toorb's enrlosefc tDttfjtn tfjis frame; 

 ■Sittr bg tf)ts tofecn gou mag see 

 <L2af)at rare mg parents 1)atr for me." 



It is a marvel of patience, done in single stitch 

 on silk which has faded to a delicious colour. It 

 is so delicate and so fine, that one would swear that 

 Mary Fleetwood's eyes must have suffered. But, 

 no ; Mary Fleetwood married, had children, met 

 her full share of trouble, and lived through it to the 

 age of eighty-one, and did not take to spectacles 

 until she was over sixty. We shake our heads, 

 Jane and I, and say regretfully that these things 

 do not happen now, and we forget that samplers 

 were only sewn because the school dames exhausted 

 the fund of their learning in the morning, and had 

 not the wherewithal to fill in the afternoons, so that, 

 when Mary Fleetwood had swallowed her crumbs 

 of reading, spelling, arithmetic, and the use of the 

 globes, her idle hands must be preserved from the 

 friend of Dr. Watts. Therefore she sewed her 

 sampler ; and now little girls have their little heads 

 crammed full of things which even we were afraid 

 to know, and actually are taught to follow the 

 processes of the loves of the plants, with the expo- 

 sure of which Erasmus Darwin so shocked Mary 



30 



