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DOILIES. 
DOILIES. 
Probably from a lady’s point of view 
doilies (d’oyleys) would be regarded as most 
attractive among the souvenirs of Jamaica. 
Workers. Many of the ladies who do 
this work have reached such a state of per- 
fection in the art that their doilies — the result 
of exquisite taste and skilful workmanship — 
command admiration from competent judges. 
A doily is bought ; the purchaser criti- 
cises and praises the work and, for the mo- 
ment, has a feeling akin to admiration and re- 
spect for the maker. How intensified would 
that feeling be, could many a doily tell its tale! 
A tale, perhaps, of some poor daughter sacri- 
ficing her youth and pleasures, while toiling 
amidst her arduous household duties, to eke 
out the scanty income of her widowed mother ; 
her earnings wasted, perhaps, on a spoilt and 
ne’er-do-weel brother, “ the very image of his 
dead father,” to use his proud mother’s own 
words. 
Or the tale may be one of a young wife, 
struggling to keep soul and body together 
and, at the same time, to “keep up appear- 
ances,” assets being, £100 per annum and 
love in a mortgaged cottage. Whatever the 
tale be, ’tis one of woman’s nobilitv and she 
thanks God, Mr. Tourist, that the reticent 
doily will not reveal it to you ! 
Fibre doilies. These — the simplest to 
make — are made from the pinguin fibre 
principally and, to a lesser extent, from the 
