AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
61 
THE SEAMSTRESS'S VISION. 
’Twas midnight!—Haggard and wan, 
A widowed seamstress drooped in her chair 
Her candle was dying, her lire was gone, 
And her hands were qlasped in despair. 
“ Oil God ! I am weary,” she cried, 
“ Of a labor that never is done; 
Twere better for me had I died 
Ere the pauperish task was begun.” 
She sat and thought of the days 
Of her childhood, all sunny and fair, 
Ere the dimness came over her eyes, 
And the silver was streaked in her hair: 
She thought of ner children—the dear, 
Of husband and parents—the dead; 
* Why struggle with beggary here; 
Why live we thus orphaned?” she said. 
Exhausted, and sickened, and sore, 
She sat at her slavish toil: 
Oh life! is there nought in thy store, 
Kut anguish, and hunger, and moil? 
Nothing but stitch at an endless seam, 
With palsied hand and dimming eye,— 
Is this the measure of life's young dream? 
Twere better to starve and die. 
She sat, and her aching head drooped low, 
Witli its burthen of grief and pain; 
A burthen none but the toiling know, 
Whose rest is dreaming of toil again. 
Her Angers relaxed and her eyes grew dim, 
And her task faded out of her sight,— 
No fire on the hearth, no candle to trim. 
Nothing left but a Vision of night. 
A Vision—for lo! she dreamed, 
Aye, dreamed she was happy and free: 
No longer her fingers wearily seamed 
Till her swollen eyes scarcely could see. 
A needle she held, and she thought it grew 
To a fair and flowering tree; 
Each flower a garment finished and new, 
And fair as a garment could be. 
0 wondrous Vision!—the needle seemed, 
As if thousands of fairy hands 
From out its flowering branches gleamed. 
Stitching hems, and gussets, and bands; 
So noiselessly stitched that never a sound 
Bv the sleepers ear was heard; 
And the garments dropped like ripened fruit, 
Which never a wind had stirred 
O wondrous Vision !—her heart was glad. 
And throbbed with rapture, to see 
The myriad human multitude clad. 
By the flowering needle-tree : 
All bravely clad, in robes unstained 
With woman's sweat and tears; 
For woman, henceforth, no longer sat 
A slave to needle and shears. 
O wondrous Vision !—woman restored 
To a share of her own birth-right, 
To be the co-mate of her husband-lord. 
And in labor to find delight: 
In a labor that slaves not heart and hand. 
Nor robs the eye of its light; 
But loving toil for the dear home-band. 
That bringeth sweet sleep at night. 
O wondrous Vision !—an hour repaid 
For years of struggle and toil, 
For stinted wages, and dearth of bread. 
And pain, and hunger, and moil. 
“For oh! nevermore, 1 * the sleeper said, 
“Shall woman a slave be bound; 
Her biessed freedom from stitch, stitch, stitok, 
In the Sewing Machine is found.” 
The Sewing Machine!—0 that was the tree, 
The seamstress saw in her dream : 
Her needle a-flowered, by fairy hands, 
Wrought gusset, and band, and seam. 
No “ Woman sat in unwomanly rags,” 
Plying the glistening steel; 
But the labor of many by one was wrought 
With pleasure, for human weal. 
Enraptured, with joy she awoke 
As her cheek caught the sun’s first gleam. 
And O!—double rapture—to find 
Her vision was not all a dream: 
For some angel of mercy had come, 
In the hours of her slumber unseen. 
And placed by her desolate hearth, 
Her Freedom! a Sewing Machine. 
“ O blessings,” she cried, “ on the brain, 
For woman's dear sake, that thought it; 
O blessings,” she cried, “ on the hands, 
For woman's dear sake, that wrought it: 
And blessed, thrice blessed their names, 
God's blessing, they surely have won it,” 
As “Wheeler and Wilson” she read. 
In letters of gold written on it. 
usings lloticts. 
Pf Fifty Cents a Line • 
The above engraving illustrates il.e < rerations of one 
of Grover & Baker’s Sewing Machines, as managed by a 
lad), i lie Marl.. are unquestionably the best in the 
market for family use. This is altestr d l.y the experience 
..I upwards of five thousai d families, of the highest re- 
spe* tahilily, in all parts of the Un led States. No well 
regulaled family can afford to do without one. 
The following, from the Secretary of a benevolent in- 
stituiiem is only one of many of a similar character, re¬ 
ceived by the manufacturer: 
Tn Messrs. Grover ,t- Baker : 
New- York. Oct 26th, 1857. 
The managers of the 14 Female Magdalene Benevolent 
Association” take pleasure in bearing testimony to the 
great utility and efficiency of “ Grover & Baker’s Sewing 
Machines,” which, for the past vear, they have h d in use 
in the sewing loom of their Asylum, and they most cheer 
fully recommend it to those families who wish greatly i.■ 
diminish labor and facilitate its successful and useful n 
suits. 
On behalf of the F. M B. Society. 
A. L M., Secretary. 
Editors of newspapers, too, have some appreciation ol 
their merits, as the following opinion will show : 
N. p Willis. Esq., Editor of the Home Journal of 
November 7, comparing this with olhers, says : “The use 
of this machine, in the first place, is easier learned 
Then the stitch is more elastic and much stronger foi 
woolen cloths. It finishes off its own work, which the 
others do not. The work can he ripped and re-sewed, 
and does not rip of itself, without its being intended, 
though everv third stitch be cut. The same machine runs 
silk, linen thread, and common spool cotton, with equal 
facility ; and a very material advantage is that it sews 
from ordinary spools, not making it. npcessary, as in the 
other machines, that the cotton should first be respooled. 
Its construction is simpler and stronger.” 
“ The Grover & Baker machines are, we believe, supe¬ 
rior to any others.”— Boston Daily Advertiser. 
“ From the best information we have been able to ob¬ 
tain as well as from careful examination of the work 
done with different machines, we are led to give the pref¬ 
erence lo Grover & Baker’s. The fineness and beauty ol 
the stitch made by ihese machines is unsurpassed, and as 
to the liability of the work to rip, it is out of the ques¬ 
tion.”— American Baptist. 
The reader is invited to call and examine them at 495 
Broadway, N. Y.; 18 Summer street, Boston , or at 730 
Chestnut street, Philadelphia. 
Market Review, Weather Notes, &c. 
American Agriculturist Office, 
New-York, Jan. 25, 1858. 
The Wholesale Produce Markets have exhibited very 
few changes of any importance smce the date of our last 
Review. The weather has been remarkably mild and 
has not hindered operations. The accounts from Europe 
have, on the whole, been more encouraging for our trade 
The Money Market has recovered from much of the de¬ 
pression caused by the panic, and embarrassments of the 
Autumn and Fall seasons The City Hanks have bpen 
steadily increasing t heir supplies of specie, tmlil t.hei now 
hold in reserve some $30,0(10,01)0— an amount wholly un¬ 
precedented in the history of New York hanking. Yet, 
with all these circumstances in favor of some revival in 
business, Trade has beenquiti backward—hu , ers purchas¬ 
ing only such supplies of ihe various articles as thev really 
required, avoiding every movement of a speculative < ha- 
racter. The Breadstuff Trade has not been a vigorous 
one. The receipts have not quite equalled the sales ■ 
but. as the annexed Tables show, we began the month, 
