AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[February, 
A 8 
The Great “ Patching and Darning ” 
Exhibition.—Editors’ Notes. 
Though a few days only were allowed for preparation, 
the contributions were unexpectedly large. Four Hun¬ 
dred and Fifty-three Ladies , from Twenty-nine States 
and Territories, sent in 71 8 parcels, numbering 13 8 1 
pieces, oi which most were quite serviceable garments. 
Among them were 278 pairs of Pantaloons (162 for Men, 
and 116 for Boys); 11*8 Coats (49 for Men, and 70 Boys’ 
coats and jackets) ; 52 Vests ; 28 Saeques ; 31 Dresses ; 
18 Skirts ; 47 Shirts and Chemises ; 29 pairs of Draw¬ 
ers: 312 pairs ot Socks and Stockings, etc., etc.; near¬ 
ly all of woollen fabric. The contributors numbered by 
States as follows ; from Maine, 4 ; N. If., 5 ; Vt., 7; Mass., 
29; R. I., 9; Conn., 34; N. Y., 124 ; N. J., 35 ; Pa.. 47 ; 
Ohio, 36; Ind., 21; Ill., 17 ; Mich., 13; Wis., 5; Iowa, 9 ; 
Nebraska, 5; Kansas, 7 ; Va., 7; W. Va., 2; Md., 10; 
Del., 7; N. C., 3; Georgia, 3; Mo., 5; Cal., 2; M'yo- 
ming Ter.. 1; D. C., 2.-Specimens were sent by girls of 
S and 10 years, by Ladies of 80 to 90, and by those of 
all ages intervening. The Exhibition was visited by a 
throng of people and was kept open on the fourth day, 
in response to the request of many gentlemen who drop¬ 
ped in on Friday, and were so astonished and pleased, 
that they earnestly desired an opportunity to bring their 
wives and daughters on Saturday. Nearly all the city 
papers noticed the exhibition with great commendation, 
several of them giving it marked attentions a highly 
useful as well as entertaining affair. 
Below we print, just as they were written and sent 
to us, the very pleasant notes and reflections of a lady- 
one of the mosL gifted writers of tiie day—who visited 
the Exhibition, and looked over a portion of the letters 
accompanying the articles. We will add, here, that the 
Publishers were move than satisfied with the good results, 
though it cost them some $300 for prizes, expressage, etc., 
besides a serious interruption to their regular business 
for several days.-The beneficial results were two-fold. 
First, more than a thousand useful garments, exactly 
what is greatly needed at this season, were placed in the 
hands of the good, noble-hearted Ladies who devote much 
time and care and labor to hunting up and feeding and 
clothing those suffering from destitution. For conven¬ 
ience, the boxes, bales and parcels were first taken 
to a spacious room at the “ Old Brewery,” or Five 
Points Mission, and seven ladies devoted two days to 
opening, assorting, labeling, numbering, and arranging 
the.articles. To have heard their many exclamations of 
gratitude to the donors as they opened garment after 
garment, and talked over what they would do with eacli 
of them, would have amply repaid every contributor a 
hundred-fold. We know these ladies will make every 
article do good service to the unfortunate children of ex¬ 
treme poverty. Every contributor may feel assured that 
each piece of clothing she sent will be worn out by some 
poor mortal who will thus bo made more comfortable. 
Every person who does a good act of this kind is not 
only happier, but is really made better in heart by the 
deed. II is “ more blessed to give than to receive,” and 
it is always blessed to give. The non-prize takers are 
therefore scarcely less rewarded than the successful ones. 
But a still greater good has been accomplished by this 
remarkable exhibition. Besides the Four Hundred and 
Fifty-three Ladies who sent their own handiwork, there 
were thousands of others, who did not contribute, but 
whose attention was called to the subject, and who set 
about testing and improving their skill in the very useful 
and needful “ accomplishments ” of patching and darn¬ 
ing well—accomplishments far more useful to nineteen- 
twentieths of the great mass of wives and daughters than 
embroidery and crocheting. 
There were hundreds of specimens which showed very 
plainly how a torn or worn garment can be made almost 
as good as new, and this, too, when leaving hardly a visi¬ 
ble trace of the repairing. An intelligent proprietor of 
one of our largest clothing and tailoring establishments 
in New York, as he looked over garment after garment, 
remarked frequently, I could afford to give high wages 
to the woman who can use the needle like that ; such 
women arc very scarce.” 
Some useful hints afforded by this exhibition with ex¬ 
tracts from letters, etc., will be discussed in our paper 
hereafter. We have now only room left to speak of the 
prizes. The articles were all labeled with cards giving 
the number and class, leaving the judges in the dark as 
to the real contributors. Sixteen ladies, chosen .for 
their intelligence and good judgment, were requested to 
act as a Committee of Award.* They met on Thursday 
morning, divided themselves into Sub-Committees, on 
the six Classes, and devoted the day to a careful examina¬ 
tion of every article, and after selecting the most meri¬ 
torious ones, counseled together in making the final 
awards. The different qualities of the materials, the 
character of the work, its utility, etc., were all taken in¬ 
to account. Wc have not room now for the separate re¬ 
ports and remarks of the Class Committee. The Pub¬ 
lishers will award some other prizes to specially 
meritorious articles, and in our next a list of these and 
of a considerable number of others which the Committee 
thought should receive special Honorable Mention. 
The following are the Committee’s 
Awards of Prizes: 
Class A.—Patching—G irls not over 16:* 
1st Prize: Carrie M. C. Towers, Tottenvillc, N. Y.$15 
2d Prize: Eunice Case, Goshen, N. Y.$10 
3d Prize: Eliza W. Tuttle, Cheshire, Conn. $5 
4th Prize: Nellie E. Hallock, Jamestown, N. Y ...H. cfc 77. 
5th Prize: Mary E. Sisson, South Portsmouth, R. I_ A. A. 
Class IS.—Patching—L adies over 10: 
1st Prize: Mas. M. C. Parker, Washington, Iowa.$15 
2d Prize: Miss Clara M. Blodgett, Philadelphia, Pa .$10 
3d Prize: Mrs. G. M. Woodward, Columbia, Conn. $5 
4th Prize: Mrs. Elizab’th Berker, No. Bergen,N.Y.T/.cfc II. 
5th Prize: Mrs. J. II. Read, New York City. A. A. 
Class C.—Darning Garments—G irls not over 16 : 
1st Prize: Maggie Shaw, Noblestown, Pa.$15 
2d Prize: Louisa G. Dreer, West Philadelphia, Pa.$10 
3d Prize: Flora Sortore, Belmont, N. Y. $5 
4th Prize: Lizzie Clark, Cheater, N. Y. II. it II. 
5th Prize: Lou. Hope, Dover, Del.. A. A. 
Class D.—Darning Garments—L adies over 10: 
1st Prize: Mrs. Jean Marc, Plainfield, N. .J.$15 
2d Prize: Miss Maggie Newell, White Plains, N. Y_$10 
3d Prize: Miss M. E. Trump, Rossville, Md. $5 
4th Prize: Miss Margaret Cook, Sherwood, N. Y..II. A II. 
5th Prize: Mrs. A. C. Macy, Jr., Hudson, N. Y. A. A. 
Class E.—Darning Stockings—G irls not over 16: 
1st Prize: Lou. Hope, Dover, Del. .$5 
• 2d Prize: Emily J. Nicholson, W.2!th St. NY. City.77.tfc7/. 
[3d Prize: Lizzie X. Haskell, St. Joseph, Mich. A. A. 
Class F.—Darning Stockings—L adies over 16: 
1st Prize: Miss Henxie Early, Lynchburg, Va.$5 
2d Prize: Miss Laura C. Olmste.vd, Genesee, N. Y..II.A II. 
3d Prize: Mrs. E. J. Gilchrist, Franklin, N. II. A. A. 
* COMMITTEE OF AWARD: From iY. Y. City: 
Miss Eleanor Burling, Miss Carrie Crawford, Miss 
Kate Crooks, Mrs. Frederic Holstein, Miss Carrie 
McAllister, Miss Helen Miles, Mrs. Eliza E. Ryer, 
Mrs. Rev. A. K. Sanford, Mrs. Rev. -T. N. Shaffer, 
Mrs. 1’eter Smith, Miss Amelia Tuuslow.- From 
New Jersey , Mrs. Mary E. Dodge, and Mrs. L. C. 
Runiile.- FromConn., Miss S. J. Pritchard.- From 
Flushing, L. 7., Mrs. W. T. Hemmenway, Mrs. 
Orange Judd, Miss Ada F. Gooding. 
The Exhibition of Patching and Darning. 
BY A VISITOR. 
The stm, going his busy rounds on the 12tli day of Janu¬ 
ary, and looking brightly down on Broadway, as is his 
wont, of a clear winter morning, saw, perhaps, no more 
unexpected sight than that which stared him in the face at 
the office of the American. Agriculturist. On all other days 
of the year ho had beheld a well-regulated publishing, 
office. Counters loaded down with wise books ; shelves 
bristling with array of things which Agriculture knows 
all about, but which arc mysterious and awful to the 
common mind; distracted looking clerks, shut up in 
little’pens, as if they were too dangerous to be at large, 
and engaged in hand-to-hand encounters with whole 
columns of appalling figures that, like poor Dora’s, 
“won’t add up;” baskets of prize potatoes and incom¬ 
parable seeds, of queer bulbous deformities, warranted 
to turn out beautiful flowers, and of such pleasant jokes 
of Mother Nature as strawberries in December, and 
blossoms in snow-time; all the agricultural wisdom of 
the country as incarnate in members of the Farmers’ 
Club, the Ogden Farmer, and other Solons of the sod, 
coming and going from morning until night;—these are 
the every day properties of the office of the Agriculturist 
and Hearth and Home , and this is its usual aspect. 
But, on tliis extraordinary Thursday, that respectable 
and bookish sanctum seemed to have gone out of its 
mind. The floor was crowded with boxes, bundles, 
hags, bales of old clothes. The counters were heaped 
with aged and infirm garments. The shelves were but- 
tressedand palisaded with double walls or faded woollen. 
Nay, ancient, pantaloons and venerable socks fairly be¬ 
strode the walls of the Publishers’ private office, and 
flaunted from the sacred precincts of the Editor-in-Chief. 
The Jew-shops of Chatham Street had never half so ex¬ 
tensive a stock in trade, nor half so critical inspectors, 
for that matter. For this congregation of old clo’ was 
the reply to the appeal of Messrs. Orange Judd & Com¬ 
pany for fine specimens of patching and darning, and 
the busy ladies flitting hither and you were the Com¬ 
mittee of Examination. 
And well might they be busy, and well might they 
pause perplexed over every third specimen. For the 
good, industrious, frugal, and determined women who 
read the appeal had responded with more than Thirteen 
Hundred articles of clothing,and some of the darning was 
so fine that the Committee believed that the good house¬ 
wife had coaxed a family of spiders (by a promise of un¬ 
disturbed housekeeping through an unlimited future) to 
weave the frayed edges together ; and some of the patch¬ 
ing was so exact and dainty that the Committee was per¬ 
suaded that the loom which wove the original fabric was 
a clumsy contrivance compared with the deft fingers 
which repaired its “ looped and windowed raggedness.” 
Plenty of darns there were which the youngest eyes of 
that grave Examining Board could not have found hut 
for the guiding white thread, like Ariadne’s clue. Many 
a patch joined itself to the parent stock as a graft to an 
old tree, seeming to improve the quality of the original. 
And again and again, and yet again, did a veritable 
garment appear which must have suggested the problem 
of the jack-knife, which, being borrowed by Tommy 
from Johnny, and supplied by said Tommy with anew 
blade, and in its turn embellished by said Tommy with 
a new handle, demanded of our puzzled infancy to know 
whether said Johnny had any right to reclaim the recon¬ 
structed article. So had new patch become old material, 
in its turn patched upon with newer. 
And oil, the “ web of life of mingled yarn, good and ill 
together,” which all these pieces joined to make, and 
which they so innocently revealed, that ho who ran might 
read. It gives one a sharp twinge of remorse for shil¬ 
lings idly spent in candy and tinsel, to think of the pa¬ 
tient poverty which has put one hundred darns into this 
old stocking and its fellow, before it felt that it could 
afford to give them to a poorer poverty than itself. There 
is a sound prick of external conscience for the careless, 
in the needle which has carefully repaired two hundred 
moth-holes in a single garment, because it was the only 
garment its owner could afford to give away. There is 
an unconscious pathos in the cheery words of the Kansas 
housewife far out on the border, who sends her package 
of stout clothing (mended and mended till no vestige of 
the first fashion thereof appears, and almost past mend¬ 
ing now), with tiie wish that there were more articles, 
and better; “but the truth is, we are all so poor out here, 
that husband and hoys have to wear their clothes .till 
they fall apart, which is perhaps a good thing, for tiie 
scarecrows look so exactly like the men, that the birds 
can’t tell them from eacli other, and so leave the crops 
alone. It would be a blessing to have the paper for a 
year; library for the household and fine arts for the 
walls; but my mending has to be done with "one hand on 
the churn or the wash-tub, and I can’t expect to take a 
prize.”—And you are more disappointed than the sender 
can be if these old stockings are not worthy of a prize, 
for she who sends them says: “We had to give up the 
papers when my husband died, for there, were many little 
mouths to feed, and only I to fill them. Butl think I see 
a chance now to get them again, and I send the only pair 
of stockings we can spare, with the darns of two years in 
them. If I don’t get the paper, two cold little feet will 
get tiie stockings, which is better.” 
Well, well, this garment might have been worn all his 
life by Old Parr, and the old lady of ninety who sends it 
certifies in tiie smallest of hands, in the most exact of 
spelling, that she is not a tailoress, that she set her patch 
and wove her darn unaided, that she is very poor, and 
would like the paper to brighten her lonely evenings, and 
so sends her hit of work for competition. Dear old lady ! 
her patient eyes are not so quick as once they were, and 
the stitches are not so fine. But the good heart, that 
hopes the poor patched clothes may help somebody who 
needs them more than she, will one day take the prize 
(hat only the Highest Court of Inquiry offers.—And the 
very next garment comes from a little girl eight, years 
old, a tiny Dame Durden of a creature, who observes with 
philosophy, “ i supose i cannot so well enough to take 
this prize but i thought i would try, and then you see, 
Mr. Judd, if you should offer another prize when i am 
bigger, i might be able to take that.”—And the next, why 
surely this comes all tiie way from Nebraska 1 Pinned to 
the tidy patch is a letter written on fair paper with a 
pretty initial letter IF. at the top. And what do you sup¬ 
pose that letter says, Curly-heads ? It says, as plain ns 
print, “Mr. Judd,—I thought I would try if I could get 
the prize. I have mended these pants all myself. I’m a 
little Indian girl and I’m only fourteen years old. 
From your friend II-W- 
Genoa 
Pawnee Reservation 
Platte Co. 
Nebraska. 
[The Agriculturist wants to whisper in your ear, bright 
little II. W., (and it hopes that the two or three hundred 
other persons, mostly “grown-ups.” who have made the 
same mistake may overhear it, and take heed to their 
ways,) that there is no such word as “pants” in tlio 
English language. “ Pantaloons ” or “ trousers ’’ is the 
name of the garment which you send and which your 
