Ralph met his mother's searching look without a quiver.

"Mamma, Mrs. Malty' was my story and you promised me you would not tell it in Primary."

"I'm afraid you are mistaken, my child; I had intended to tell it, and I didn't know that I made you a promise not to do so."

"Yes, I'm sure you did, mamma. Can't you remember? I said to you, don't you tell that story in Primary, and you said, 'All right.'"

She

The mother was puzzled. could not doubt the word of her child; nor could she remember the conversation to which he referred. So she replied,

"Well, then I didn't understand what you said, and I made a mistake; so you will forgive me this time, won't you, dear?"

"Yes, I will forgive you; but it was a lie, wasn't it?"

"Oh, no, dear, that was a mistake. Did you ever know your mamma to tell a lie?" "No-0-0. But what is the difference between a lie and a mistake?"

"My little Ralph has never told a lie, but he has made a great many mistakes. Don't you remember one Sunday when papa was suddenly called away, he asked you to go and tell Uncle Frank he wanted him to go up to meeting and take the minutes in his place, and you hurried down there just as Uncle Frank was going to sit down to dinner, and said, 'Uncle Frank, papa wants you to go up to meeting in eight minutes,' and poor Uncle Frank never stopped for his dinner but hurried all the way. and then had to wait at the meetinghouse almost an hour alone; but you didn't tell a lie, did you?"

"Oh, no, that was what I thought papa said."

"Of course you didn't mean to be untruthful. You just made a mistake, that was all. Now, you can forgive mamma, can't you?"

Ralph saw the point at once; and impulsively signified his willingness to forgive and forget by a rousing kiss. Then he "got up steam," and with a parting "Toot, toot," was soon off to play.

In preparing the lesson on the Word of Wisdom, a letter was written to Elder Duncan McAllister, by the Editor of the Journal, asking for information in regard to the use of pork. The following reply was received, and it is added here, as it contains a number of helpful suggestions:

March 16, 1900.

Dear Sister Gates:Your letter of 14th is to hand. I did write a great deal for the News, from 1895 to 1897, concerning the Word of Wisdom and matters associated with that revelation, averaging about one column weekly for two years.

On the subject you specially refer to, the eating of pork, there was considerable in those articles. If you care to read them I will loan you my scrap book for that purpose.

As to pork eating being "contrary to the Word of Wisdom," I recall the fact that President Young in his sermon on the Word of Wisdom denounced the eating of pork, and also dwelt upon other things not mentioned therein that are deleterious to health; consequently, we are justified in associating the prohibition of swine's flesh as being properly included as an infringement of that law, although it is not specifically stated in the revelation. I have heard

some argue that because rye is designated in the Word of Wisdom as food for swine, that is an indication that the eating of swine flesh is not prohibited now as it was to former-day Israel. By the same reasoning it could as well be shown that man may eat his fellow man, or make horse flesh his food, because the revelation says wheat for man and oats for the horse.

I contend that the law given by the Lord to the children of Israel regarding the animals and fish that they were not to eat, or were permitted to eat, is as applicable to mankind today as then, and should be considered as the mind and will of the Lord now, and in force. It is true, there are many who seek to justify themselves in disregarding that law by the statement the Redeemer made to the Nephites, after His resurrection, in which He said, answering their inquiry concerning the law of Moses, "The law in me is fulfilled *** therefore it hath an end." Now, Moses gave an extensive code of laws, which have governed nearly the whole human race since his day, and it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that the sacrifice of Christ annulled all those laws. The fact is that the law to which He referred was the law of sacrifice, and all the others that are suited to the being and conditions of mankind remain in force. For instance (see Leviticus xi, 7 and 8, also Leviticus xi, 46 and 47). The law against eating swine's flesh is just as necessary to the physical welfare of man today as when Moses announced it. The crucifixion of the Savior did not make that filthy animal clean; it is still unclean, in America as well as Asia, and wholly unfit for human food.

President Young made this clear in several of his discourses. I quote from one of those I heard him de

liver, April 6th, 1868. (See Journal of Discourses, vol. 12, page 192.)

"A thorough reformation is needed in our eating and drinking, and on this point I will freely express myself, and shall be glad if the people will hear, believe and obey. If the people were willing to receive the true knowledge from heaven in regard to their diet, they would cease eating swine's flesh. I know this as well as Moses knew it, and without putting it in a code of commandments. When I tell you that it is the will of the Lord to cease eating swine's flesh, very likely some one will tell you that it is the will of the Lord to stop eating beef and mutton, etc."

On the following day President George Q. Cannon testified that “God has moved upon His servant Brigham to stir up the people's minds to the consideration of a great variety of subjects connected with our temporal well being," and then he especially called attention to the prohibition of swine's flesh as an article of food. (See Journal of Discourses, vol. 12, pages 221 and 222.) D. M. McAllister.

to the sixteenth century it was wholly unknown.

But today you hear people speak of "rare old laces" in the same reverential tone that they speak of "rare jewels;" and you read of wonderful laces that are precious heirlooms in old aristocratic families; and you hear your cultured friends discourse glibly of "old point" and "pillow" lace, of "Punto di Venise," of "Punto Burano," and "rosa," of "Brussels," "Honiton and Chantilly," in a tone of "of-course-you-know-allabout them." Of course you don't; it all seems a jumble and as inextricable as the threads in the lacy wonders themselves, and you feel such an ignoramus that you wouldn't for the world confess it by asking for a crumb of information, but sit awkwardly silent, feeling that your education has been sadly neglected.

Again, you hear of laces, worth one thousand pounds for a dress; and

you

at the stores that you have secretly think of the fleecy beauties down been coveting and couldn't buy because from two to five dollars per yard was too dear; and you wonder what fabric of ye gods that other lace must be to bring such a price!

So now let me unravel a little of this tangle of lacy meshes.

In the first place, there is lace and lace and lace. That which the stores. supply, exquisite though it is, is no real lace at all, only a machine made imitation; the genuine article is all made by patient hands, stitch by stitch or mesh by mesh, sometimes with thread so fine that a year sees scarcely one yard completed. stitch is guided by human thought, loving human eyes have smiled or wept, while the same human fingers wrought the fairy figures. That is lace, the lace for which kings and

Every

queens and nobles spent fortunes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and nearly ruined the finances of France, and which was as much the mark of rank, and wealth, and royal favors, as gold, jewels or their insignia, for what poor wight could afford to procure it?

Of these laces there are two general classes: the point laces or needlepoint, made with the needle, and the bobbin or pillow laces, made by interweaving threads from scores or hundreds of tiny bobbins upon a pillow. Sometimes a lace is part point and part bobbin work; and again, since the days of lace machines, some, like the Brussels variety, are made of sprays and scrolls in both the former methods appliqued upon a ground of machine made net.

The art and industry of lace making had its birth and rapid development in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Traces of lace, prior to this period, have been diligently sought for, but neither on mummies or painted walls or sculpture or in any archeological finding whatsoever, have any traces of it been disCovered.

The European woman can claim it justly and proudly as her own invention, as her contribution to the great Renaissance. Says an author: "To woman lace owes its creation, its production and its patronage. It is no inconsiderable achievement to give birth to an art, to invent an industry, to endow one's sex with a means for obtaining a livelihood-a means, which at the same time shall afford an outlet for artistic expression. Yet, this is what the Renaissance woman did."

Lace is solely an occidental decoration; its pale beauty does not appeal to the oriental, with his taste for rich coloring and gorgeous stuffs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it greets us, a veritable giant in industrial stature, a source of great wealth to the nations which

produced it. In Venice, in 1664, the lace trade exports amounted to 400,000 crowns. In Belgium at one time 150,000 women were employed in lace making, and in France 300,000 were thus engaged, while in Spain, Germany and England the numbers were also large.

But in 1807 lace machines put in their appearance; a severe rivalry began between the machine and the industry of the needle and the bobbin; and as the machines were perfected from time to time, so that they imitated perfectly the effects of the latter, producing also a wealth of variety of designs, at prices with which no slow process of the hand could cope, the death blow seemed to be given to the lace industry. when efforts were made in France to revive its manufacture, it was found that the old trained workers of needlepoint had all passed away, and with them many of the secrets of the old art; while in 1851 it was found that of the workers of that most noted of pillow laces-the Valenciennes, only two women remained, both being over eighty years old.

There is something, if but a sentiment, about the work of the hands, of whatever class it may be, that no cold steel machine can supply; a subtle, human quality, that makes it infinitely more precious than the machine product. Then, too, the lot of the poor lace makers has been such a sad one, that from time to time efforts have been made to resuscitate the industry-governments have given their support, and royalty their patronage.

We have all heard of Queen Victoria's partiotic act of having her wedding dress made of lace by the Honiton lace makers, whom she pitied-a royal example of kindness that had a revivifying effect upon the art in England. And today, again, hundreds of thousands ply the needle and send the bobbins flying in the

various haunts of the old lace industry throughout Europe. But it goes without saying, that now, as then, their product is a luxury wealth alone can buy.

Embroidery, as you know, is a decoration of threads on a previously prepared foundation, while lace is an ornamental fabric, wholly without such support. "Punto diaria"stitch in air-as the Italians aptly called it.

demore

All

It is interesting to trace the evolution from embroidery to lace. Cut work, drawn work, netting, then reticulla, finally lace itself is veloped, each one a little independent of a foundation. of these are still in vogue more or less, and it is interesting, too, to compare the products of the olden times with those of today. Cut work was a sort of perforated embroidery, the antecedent, no doubt, of the Irish and Swiss embroideries of today. Netting was produced then just as it is now, and the pattern darned in afterward. It was very popular in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries under the name of "opus filatarium," and "lace," in France, the nearest approach to our word "lace," and is still popular in many parts of Germany under the name of "filet."

Reticulla lace was simply a reticulation of threads, forming various interlacing, geometrical designs, stretched within a frame, when the threads were covered with weaving and buttonhole stitches; this was the great household lace of the seventeenth century.

It is probable that these early efforts and geometrical designs were derived from Greece, Arabia, and other Eastern countries; cutwork itself was known as Greek lace. From there it is thought to have been transplanted into Venice, then a proud, rich republic, in constant intercourse with the East. It was in Venice where the lace industry took

firm root and attained a grace and perfection that baffles description, as early as the sixteenth century.

But another country also lays claim to the honor of inventing lace, and early set up a rivalry with Venice, namely Belgium, and especially the city of Flanders. It is a noteworthy fact that the two localities of Europe where pictorial art first attained a high standard, are the exact regions where the lace industry first grew into importance, both from a commercial and artistic point of view.

Venetian point lace is considered the most matchless lace of all. Here we find the famous "rose point," or raised point, where the floriated scrolls and arabesques were worked in relief with fine, close stitches, and the figures joined by picoted bars, called technically "brides," giving an effect like richly carved ivory. Later the bars or brides were worked with more regularity, forming little hexagons. To these succeeded a lighter sort of lace, where the rich relief gave way to flat work with a ground of small meshes this was "flat point" or "point de Venise a reseau;" in effect less gorgeous, but much finer.

Flanders, and later other Belgian localities, gave to the world simultaneously with Venice, exquisite productions of lace-"points de Flanders" and "Brussels," and the pillow laces of Mechlin, Valenciennes and "point de Angleterre." These laces are noted for their gossamer fineness, especially the "Brussels points." In former times the ground or "fond gaze" of the latter consisted of small round meshes made by needle or bobbin, which made it so costly as to prevent its production in other countries. It is said, and one can form an estimate of the fineness of the lace from the statement that from one pound of flax alone they could manufacture lace to the value of seven hundred pound sterling. This is the "Point gaze" of Brussels.

It is