so
cheaply and so mechanically got by _weaving_ that, however freely it may
be rendered, there is a danger of its suggesting mechanical production,
which embroidery emphatically ought not to do. There is a similar
objection nowadays to some stitches, such, for example, as chain-stitch
and back-stitch, which suggest the sewing-machine.

Embroidery does not to-day take quite the place it once did. It was
used, for example, by the early Coptic Christians to supplement
tapestry. That is to say, what they could not weave they stitched; it
was only to get more delicate detail than their tapestry loom would
allow, that they had recourse to the needle. Needlework was, in fact, an
adjunct to weaving. Later, in mediaeval times, the Germans of Cologne,
for their church vestments and the like, wove what they could, and
enriched their woven figures with embroidery.

Again, a great deal of Oriental embroidery, and of peasant work
everywhere, is merely the result of circumstances. Where money is scarce
and time is of no account, it answers a woman's purpose to do for
herself with her needle what might in some respects be even better done
on the loom. Her preference for handwork is not that it has artistic
possibilities, but that it costs her less. She would in many cases
prefer the more mechanically produced fabric, if she could get it at the
same price. We do not find that Orientals reject the productions of the
power-loom--which they would do if they had the artistic instincts with
which we credit them.

[Illustration: 89. SIMPLE STITCHING ON LINEN.]

It results from our conditions of to-day that there are some kinds of
needlework we admire, which yet are not worth our doing, such, for
example, as the all-over work, which does not amount to more than simple
diaper, and which really is not so much embroidering on a textile as
converting it into one of another kind. Glorified instances of this kind
of work occur in the shawl work of Cashmere, and in those beautiful bits
of Persian stitching which remind one of carpet-work in miniature, if
they are not in fact related to carpet-weaving.

Embroidery was at one time the readiest, and practically the only, means
of getting enrichment of certain kinds. To-day we get machine
embroidery. As machinery is perfected, and learns to do what formerly
could be done only by the needle, hand-workers get pushed aside and fall
out of work. Their chance is, in keeping always in advance of the
mach