the click, click of the merry machine needle; and the sense of progress, as yard after yard of sewing streams out of the apparatus, absolutely excites rather than depresses the spirits, as the common needle-sewing does. Then again the manner in which the manipulator can wisk the work about, making curves, ovals, acute angles, or any evolutions, as neatly as the skater cuts figures upon the ice, absolutely giving a sense of power and liberty which the sewer never felt before. Some of the movements of the machine are absolutely marvellous; for instance, the hemming apparatus is the prettiest contrivance imaginable. You see a raw edge of linen placed upon an edge of metal curved in a slightly spiral manner, and the next thing you see is the raw edge tucked under and hemmed with the rapidly-advancing needle. Handkerchiefs are thus hemmed you can look round. before In America every household possesses its machine; not a black clumsy article, fit only for the workshop, but a brightly arabesqued or silver-plated little instrument, mounted in an elegant, polished, fancy-wood case,-quite an ornament to any room, in fact. Independently of the pleasure felt in working it, we must consider for a moment what its advent means. It means emancipation from the most abject domestic drudgery; it means increased time for all occupations requiring the exercise of mind. The Sewing-machine ought to give us time in our homes for more and better music; the arts of design should now flourish; and all the elegances which are evidences of a time of ease and refinement, should abound in dwellings before debarred from such luxuries by the toil entailed upon our women by that barbarous machine the needle. Y If we would consider how much the well-being of all classes of civilized men are bound together, and act and react upon each other, we should not forget the story of Elias Howe, the New York mechanic, who, in "poverty, hunger, and dirt," laboured sucessfully not only to lift poor women from the slow starvation entailed upon them by the needle, but also sent a gleam of sunshine into every household, and incidentally lent powerful aid to the progress of social happiness and refinement. THE "TIMES" ADVERTISING SHEET. If IF Dr. Jedlor lived in these days, and I wished to combat his facetious idea that "Life was a capital joke, nothing serious in it," I should put into the goodnatured old gentleman's hand a copy of the Times Newspaper. there is anything terribly in earnest in the world it is the advertising sheet of this paper. Was anything ever more fearfully alive? Every advertisement seems to fight with its neighbour for pre-eminence and distinction, and each page seems to writhe and wrestle all over like a dish full of maggots. What fleets of vessels are just ready to start for the lands of gold, each one possessing the best accommodation, and boasting the ablest captain. What stalls of horses fill up another column, each one a greater bargain than the other. What galleries of old masters just ready to fall under the hammer, each picture the most genuine of the lot. What ranks of servants out of place, all ticketed with their respective "wants." What groups of poor young gentlewomen "seeking a comfortable home" in the nurseries of the fortunate. If the spectator for a moment stops to dwell upon such advertisements, the iron enters into his soul, and he must seek relief by a philosophic contemplation of the mass. At the top of the column Love now and then stands making signs with finger upon lip—“Florence” gives "a thousand kisses" to her distant and secret lover. A mother implores her darling boy to "return home and all will be forgiven;" or an injured wife, with vehement words, leaps to the first reconciling words of her lord. Above the shouting of chapmen, the puffing of quacks, and the thousand voices of trade we hear these fervid outbursts of the human heart, and solitary cries of anguish, with a strange and startling distinctness. Sometimes, like Garrick's face, the pages will appear half in tragedy half in farce. Mark that long list of hospitals, crying out for aid for the maimed and sick—and then beside it the sprightly row of theatres, smilingly displaying its tinsel attractions. Here an economic undertaker calculates for bereaved relatives what he can do" a gentleman's funeral for, with "hearse and plumes and two coaches and pairs," or for what he can afford to put a defunct artisan underground, by means of the Shillibeer 'bus. In the very next advertisement an enterprising stationer boasts the largest assortment of wedding cards, and finds everything (but happiness) for the bride. Then, again, "The original Maison Deuil" draws attention to its "poignant grief mantles and inconsolable trimmings." Every ingredient of life seems mixed in this ever-open book: we laugh, we cry, we pardon, pity, or condemn, as morning after morning it brings before us the swiftlyshifting scenes of this mortal life. In the ancient Greek theatres, where the actors had to give their recitations in the open air, they made use of a brazen mask which projected the voice to a sufficient distance to be heard by a vast multitude of people. The brazen mask of the present age is this advertising sheet, behind which all conditions of people, day by day, plead their wants to the entire nation. What a strange crowd, in one continual stream, passes through the doors of the little room in Printing-house Square, where this mask is erected! The poor shrinking girl, who, for the first time, is obliged to come in contact with the hard world, brings her advertisement, offering herself as a governess for the sake of "a comfortable home," the clever schemer, who makes a living of the postage-stamps, he exacts from those to whom he offers some extraordinary advantages,the enthusiast who brings his five shillings to have the end of the world proclaimed by a certain day, -the poor widow who has come to plead "to the benevolent" for her destitute children, and the agent of the millionaire advertising for a loan of millions,-all shoulder each other in this room. What passages of life might not the attendant clerk read, to whom this continual throng as it were exposes the secret necessities of the heart. How anxiously next day each individual searches the wet page for the all-important advertisement. How the glossy curls of the young girl ripple over the sheet as she reads her own wants proclaimed aloud. It almost takes her breath away-she, the timid little thing, thus to speak out as boldly as the best of them! The thought arises in her mind, that some good lady who has a daughter like herself, is reading it, and will have pity on her it might be, that some abandoned wretch has the paragraph at the moment under his eye, and is plotting an answer which will bring her under his clutches. The schemer, ere the boy has come round for the borrowed. paper, has succeeded: piles of letters from people eager |