be defined as the thread left on the surface of the cloth
or what not, after each ply of the needle.

And the simple straightforward stitches of this kind are not so many as
one might suppose. They may be reduced indeed to a comparatively few
types, as will be seen in the following chapters.

CANVAS STITCHES.

The simplest, as it is most likely the earliest used, stitch-group is
what might best be called CANVAS stitch--of which cross-stitch is
perhaps the most familiar type, the class of stitches which come of
following, as it is only natural to do, the mesh of a coarse canvas,
net, or open web upon which the work is done.

A stitch bears always, or should bear, some relation to the material on
which it is worked; but canvas or very coarse linen almost compels a
stitch based upon the cross lines of its woof, and indeed suggests
designs of equally rigid construction. That is so in embroidery no
matter where. In ancient Byzantine or Coptic work, in modern Cretan
work, and in peasant embroidery all the world over, pattern work on
coarse linen has run persistently into angular lines--in which, because
of that very angularity, the plain outcome of a way of working, we find
artistic character. Artistic design is always expressive of its mode of
workmanship.

Work of this kind is not too lightly to be dismissed. There is art in
the rendering of form by means of angular outlines, art in the choice
of forms which can be expressed by such lines. It is not uncharitable
to surmise that one reason why such work (once so universal and now
quite out of fashion) is not popular with needlewomen may be, the demand
it makes upon the designer's draughtmanship: it is much easier, for
example, to draw a stag than to render the creature satisfactorily
within jagged lines determined by a linen mesh.

[Illustration: 4. CROSS-STITCH.]

The piquancy about natural or other forms thus reduced to angularity
argues, of course, no affectation of quaintness on the part of the
worker, but was the unavoidable outcome of her way of work. There is a
pronounced and early limit to art of this rather naive kind, but that
there is art in some of the very simplest and most modest peasant work
built up on those lines no artist will deny. The art in it is usually in
proportion to its modesty. Nothing is more futile than to put it to
anything like pictorial purpose. The wonderfully wrought pictures in
tent-stitch, for example, bequeathed to us by