e daily and hourly accumulation of minute particles which form the
vast amount.

And if we look for that feminine employment which adds most absolutely
to the comforts and the elegancies of life, to what other shall we
refer than to NEEDLEWORK? The hemming of a pocket-handkerchief is a
trivial thing in itself, yet it is a branch of an art which furnishes
a useful, a graceful, and an agreeable occupation to one-half of the
human race, and adds very materially to the comforts of the other
half.

How sings our own especial Bard?--

"So long as garments shall be made or worne;
So long as hemp, or flax, or sheep shall bear
Their linnen wollen fleeces yeare by yeare;
So long as silkwormes, with exhausted spoile
Of their own entrailes, for mans gaine shall toyle:
Yea, till the world be quite dissolv'd and past,
So long, at least, the NEEDLE'S use shall last."

'Tis true, indeed, that as far as _necessity_, rigidly speaking, is
concerned, a very small portion of needlework would suffice; but it is
also true that the very signification of the word necessity is lost,
buried amidst the accumulations of ages. We talk habitually of _mere
necessaries_, but the fact is, that we have hardly an idea of what
merely necessities are.

St. Paul, the hermit, when abiding in the wilderness, might be reduced
to necessities; and in that noble and exalted instance of high
principle referred to by Mr. Wesley,[3] where a person unknown to
others, seeking no praise, and looking to no reward but the
applaudings of his own conscience, bought a pennyworth of parsnips
weekly, and on them, and them alone, with the water in which they were
boiled, lived, that he might save money to pay his debts.--Surely a
man of such incorruptible integrity as this would spend nothing
intentionally in superfluities of dress--and yet, mark how many he
would have. His shirt would be "curiously wrought," his neckcloth
neatly hemmed; his coat and waistcoat and trousers would have
undergone the usual mysteries of shaping and seaming; his hat would be
neatly bound round the edge; his stockings woven or knitted; his
shoes soled and stitched and tied; neither must we debar him a
pocket-handkerchief and a pair of gloves. And see what this man--as
great, nay, a greater anchoret in his way than St. Paul, for he had
the world and its temptations all around, while the saint had fled
from both--yet see what _he_ thought absolutely requisite in lieu