people differ, and they very little."

M- was telling me to-day that, with all the slow way of doing things, grassgrowing is very profitable, and that there can be more money made with grass, with dairies, with pear-growing, and even with vegetables, than with grapes. He prefers grapes, however, as he thinks it a "nicer" kind of farming. Besides, if he can not sell his wine this year, it is all the better and the dearer next. It bears better interest by keeping than his five per cent. bonds do. Saw them bringing some hay over the lake in boats. It was a pretty scene, just in the twilight. Everything about farm life on the Continent seems picturesque. They seem to study novel ways of doing things, and almost every hut, or house, or barn, or bridge, seems built with an eye to pretty effect. In America this is usually left out of the undertaking entirely. A correspondent of a Berlin paper wrote once from Cincinnati: "When you have seen one town in America, you have seen all; one farm, all farms; one village, all

October 1.-The last grass is being mown, and the pears are being taken from the trees. It is the fourth mowing.

M- has some seventy-five pear-trees crowded into his little farm, and a few apples. He will have about what apples the family can use, but none to sell. Both apples and pears have done poorly. Still, he will make the pears into cider, and will sell it before Christmas for about two hundred dollars. The grass under the trees is good, and he will have to buy little or no hay for his horse and two cows this winter.

October 10.-A half-dozen neighbors are on the farm, and the grape-cutting has commenced. There is any amount of sport on the occasion. As soon as the cutting is done, there will be a party and a dance in the barn. We are invited to take part, and shall certainly do so. Some of the peasants will come masked, and there will be no sleeping that night within a mile of "my farm." A few grapes have been cut by neighbors already, and the wagons go by with the queer long

I

casks on top filled with new wine. The bung-holes of the casks are filled with bouquets of roses-a gift to Bacchus. saw one wine wagon with a nearly naked little boy astride the cask, a Bacchus himself, with coal-black eyes and laughing locks.

M- now calculates on the profits of the year's farming. His four acres of grapes have produced twenty saum each of decent Swiss wine; value by spring will be fifteen dollars and twenty-five cents per saum, or about one thousand two hundred and twenty dollars, equalling twenty per cent. on the investment, counting the grape land to be worth one thousand six hundred dollars per acre. Some of M-'s neighbors, who have worked more than he, have this year made thirty per cent. on their grape-farm investments, and it is

only an av

erage year at that. The apple and pear trees ought to produce as much profit as the grapes, but this year M-- is not so fortunate as to have everything turn out well. He keeps books, and here is an extract from the last page:

Y.Shultz

100

250

$2070

M says he never did much better than this when in business, when the risks and the anxieties were unspeakably

greater. As to the health, and pleasure, and all that, to be obtained in the two callings, I am sure nobody would ever think of comparing them.

I am glad I kept this diary. I have now convinced myself of what I had oft

en been told, viz., that a man who has as nice a little sum of money as twenty thousand dollars saved can be happier and safer in the world, working a bit of land, than by remaining in the risky whirlpool of what is called "business."

"This bright art

Did zealous Europe learn of pagan hands,
While she assay'd with rage of holy war
To desolate their fields; but old the skill:
Long were the Phrygians' pict'ring looms renowned;
Tyre also, wealthy seat of art, excell'd,
And elder Sidon, in the historic web."-DYER.

E

MBROIDERY, though properly considered a comparatively unimportant sister art of painting, is, perhaps, the oldest of the fine arts. Its origin is various in various nations, and it is one of the few arts practiced, more or less imperfectly, by all savage tribes, from time immemorial, in one form or other, according to the materials available, and the religions and customs obtaining. At various periods of the world's history, and in many localities, embroidery has reached great perfection, and has been made "the vehicle of higher powers than its own" for all uses, from mere personal adornment to the expression of religious thought. Technically speaking, the palm must be awarded to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hindoos, the Persians, and the Turks; and as far as Europe is concerned, the practice of embroidery is coeval with the first intercourse with these nations, especially the Persians and Turks, though it is difficult to determine how great an influence the Egyptians exercised in this respect over the Greeks and Romans, and also from what source the Egyptian embroideries were derived. However, the modern interest in embroidery is not archæological, and this glance at that phase of the subject is sufficient.

The present revival of interest in embroidery seems likely to be more permanent than any that has preceded it, because it is now something more than a passing fashion in dress, as was the case in England in 1846, when London alone employed two thousand pair of hands in decorating every conceivable article of dress worn by ladies of fashion. Now it is her own handiwork, the hours of patient stitching, the choice of materials and col

ors, and the realization of an artistic thought, that the lady of fashion is proud of, not, as formerly, the money that these cost. She has now a real appreciation of the beauty of her India shawl, with its seven hundred stitches to the square inch, and other features that make her treasures of old lace so valuable. The mere filling in of worsted-work is superseded by an occupation that requires thought, knowledge, taste, and skill; the promised slippers or sofa cushion are no longer so much to be dreaded, and even the afghan, chair back, and chauffe-pied are assuming artistic importance-things that can not only be tolerated for the sake of association, but which we can conscientiously admire, and be thankful for. Of course many things are embroidered which should be perfectly plain, if, indeed, as in the case of a valance for a mantel, they should exist at all; but this lack of discrimination is incident to all beginnings, and we may feel certain that the enthusiasm which has carried the mantel valance to completion will lead to a degree of acquirement that will acknowledge its incongruity, and by that time the heat and soot of the fire will have rendered it unsightly enough to be consigned to the attic, among the useless accumulations of the past.

If anything permanent and valuable is to result from the present enthusiasm for art - needlework, it will be the achievement of those who are obliged to find a market for their labors. These will soon discover that while a knowledge of the South Kensington crewel-work is essential, it is a small beginning, that all methods and all materials are available, and that if the effect aimed at can not be realized by known processes, invention must supply the means. The finest modern embroideries I have seen were executed by ladies who had received no special instruction, but who were endowed with the rare quality of mind which accepts the value of precedent as a basis for in

simpler to baste over the whole surface to be worked a piece of canvas to act as a guide or scale for the stitches, and when the work is complete, this canvas is drawn, thread by thread, leaving the velvet perfectly clean, with the embroidery upon it (Fig. 3). In such work, the variety of stitches is necessarily limited, and no very ambitious artist would condescend to the expedient.

The various known stitches illustrated in Fig. 2 can all be effectively used in "low" embroidery, and with the assistance of raised" and "laid" methods make the art capable of important expression. Fig. 4 is a specimen of Persian work in silk and gold thread on silk; in this, only two stitches are employed--the chain and a kind of tent stitch in which both sides

FIG. 4.

may be achieved by making some portions of the work in long stitches, and still further varieties by catching these down to the material in color or gold; in fact, the use of different colors and materials in the threads, as in all styles of embroidery, opens an inexhaustible field for inventive combination.

In embroideries upon velvet it is often

FIG. 5.

FIG. 6.

are alike. There are two shades of pink and one of blue in the flower and buds, the blue occurring again in the vase, but the outlines, most of the vase, the stems, and tendrils, are of gold, the leaves being filled in with black; the ground is a lustrous sea-green. The illustration is only one of thirty-six patterns forming the border of a plain centre, the whole being four feet long by twenty inches wide, one-third of which surface is covered by the border, that could not have been executed in less than two months' constant labor. The general tone and form of the patterns are similar, while no two are exactly alike in any respect. This variety in unity is one of the strongest characteristics of Eastern work.