Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1886-11-20

earn enough to help on the household,
and even sometimes to help themselves.
Early in this century the Honiton lace
trade had sunk into very wretched
thing. Nobody bought the lace, and
the poor lace-makers would work day
and night without being able to earn
their bread. Then the young Princess
Victoria came to the throne, and when
she heard the story of the poor Devon
shire lace fox her heart was stirred
with pity and sorrow.
English people should wear Eng
lish Lace" she said. Il will try to
make them see how beautiful it is.
And so the young Queens corona
ton robes were trimmed with the snowy,
tilm-like lace, and by-and-by her bridal
gown. And years afterward, as each
royal princess gave her hand and heart
at the altar to some prince of her
choice the lovely Honiton was still the
only adornment of her wedding dress
And never was there lace more fitting
Tor royal wear, or more capable of be-
ing worked in every cunning and ex-
quisite device. All the leaves OF the
field and every flower that grows, the
birds and the butterflies and the ferns,
all lend their graceful forms for its de-
signs, which hint at them, but do
try to copy. Clever lace-makers can
weave their own names into the scroll
of pattern or the tracery of leaf,
and no one who did not know the secret
could even guess where it was till it
was pointed out. Then one can draw
ones own designs, and pick them out,
and so thousand different combina-
tons can be made, each one more
wonderful than the last.
OF late, lace-making has become
fashionable work in English drawing
rooms. One sees cushions covered
with embroidered cloths and ivory
bobbins inlaid with glittering gold and
liver; and certainly there was never u
aalntiel employment for delicate fingers
nor more charming occupation than
the tossing to and fro of the rafting
bones,' and seeing the fairy-hke
texture grow beneath ones hands.
But, after all, even drawing room
surroundings can never be prettier or
more fascinating than the scenes where
1T first came into the world, and down
among the valleys of Buckinghamshire
or along the Devon coast the lace trade
is series of pictures that, once seen,
can never be forgotten. Sometimes it
IS steep cliff side, where the children
bring their pillows on summers even
ing, and sit and chatter and laugh to-
gether over their work, after the man
ner of children all the world over;
sometimes it is deep, low cottage
porch, where the sunbeams fall broken
and scattered through the wild, strag-
Cling branches of clematis, and the
blackbird sings in its quaint wicker
cage hanging overhead; and sometimes
it IS by the winter fire, when the wild
winds rage round the old stone cottage
walls, and the waves break loud and
long on the black rocks below. and the
group within draw closer together with
their cushions, and the old mother
shudders as fiercer blast comes in the
gale, and lays her hand with touch
that is like caress on the wel1-worn
bobbin that bears the name of her
sailor boy away out on the stormy sea.
Winter or summer, storm or shine, the
bobbins fly to and fro, and the threads
weave, and the wondrous fabric grows,
silent and sure, AID spreads, white as
the Alpine snow-drifts, over the mystic
rious pattern rricked below.-Harper's
lO1tllg PeOpie.