"A very old lady, in a lofty cap and faded silk gown--no less a
personage than Mr. Wardle's mother--occupied the post of
honour on the right-hand corner of the chimney-piece; and
various certificates of her having been brought up in the way she
should go when young, and of her not having departed from it
when old, ornamted the walls, in the form of samplers of
ancient date.."

There were a dozen of them preserved in the attic of the house where I was born. Vandal that I was as preteen, I threw them away. Now I wish I hadn't, even though I have no way of knowing the names of the girls who so laboriously created them, with mottoes such as "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home".