the skill they
are primarily required to show and to develop is one of fine fingers in
reproducing beautiful forms in threads. The conception, arrangement, and
drawing of beautiful forms for a design, have to be undertaken by
decorative artists acquainted with the limitations of those materials and
methods which the ultimate expression of the design involves.

This lovely Irish art of lace-making is very much indebted to Mr. Cole,
who has really re-created it, given it new life, and shown it the true
artistic lines on which to progress. Hardly 20,000 pounds a year is
spent by England upon Irish laces, and almost all of this goes upon the
cheaper and commoner kinds. And yet, as Mr. Cole points out, it is
possible to produce Irish laces of as high artistic quality as almost any
foreign laces. The Queen, Lady Londonderry, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Mrs.
Alfred Morrison, and others, have done much to encourage the Irish
workers, and it rests largely with the ladies of England whether this
beautiful art lives or dies. The real good of a piece of lace, says Mr.
Ruskin, is 'that it should show, first, that the designer of it had a
pretty fancy; next, that the maker of it had fine fingers; lastly, that
the wearer of it has worthiness or dignity enough to obtain what is
difficult to obtain, and common-sense enough not to wear it on all
occasions.'

* * * * *

The High-Caste Hindu Woman is an interesting book. It is from the pen of
the Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, and the introduction is written by Miss
Rachel Bodley, M.D., the Dean of the Woman's Medical College of
Pennsylvania. The story of the parentage of this learned lady is very
curious. A certain Hindu, being on a religious pilgrimage with his
family, which consisted of his wife and two daughters, one nine and the
other seven years of age, stopped in a town to rest for a day or two. One
morning the Hindu was bathing in the sacred river Godavari, near the
town, when he saw a fine-looking man coming there to bathe also. After
the ablution and the morning prayers were over, the father inquired of
the stranger who he was and whence he came. On learning his caste, and
clan, and dwelling-place, and also that he was a widower, he offered him
his little daughter of nine in marriage. All things were settled in an
hour or so; next day the marriage was concluded, and the little girl
placed in the possession of the stranger, who took her nearly nine
hundred miles away from her