There's the same sweet clover smell in the breeze,

And the June sun warm

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,

Setting as then over Fernside farm.

I mind me how, with a lover's care,
From my Sunday coat

I brushed off the burs and smoothed my hair,

And cooled at the brook side my brow and throat.

Since we parted a month had passed,

To love, a year;

Down through the beeches I looked at last,

On the little red gate and the well sweep near.

FLUENT and sensible writer in the Bazar Dressmaker says that the highest ambition of a young dressmaker is to stand at the head of her profession as a cutter and fitter. Reader, if you have that ambition, and have patience to go forth, step by step, learning each lesson as you go, you will be rewarded with success. Bear in mind that Pingat and Worth, now the two greatest dressmakers in the world, were once as ignorant of dressmaking as you are. It was by gathering up the little things and binding them together that they became great.

In the United States there are many who excel in trimming, draping, and in giving an air of style, but who are poor fitters. A want of this knowledge precludes the possibility of their reaching the highest position in their profession. The difficulty in gaining the higher art is the want of a knowledge of the lower art. A young woman who wants to become an expert in the

art must begin at the beginning. All knowledge outside of this is superficial, uncertain, and unsatisfactory.

The question which every young woman is likely to ask herself is this: "How shall I excel as a cutter and fitter?" To the mass of dressmakers, and especially to those who are about to start in the business, no theme can be of deeper interest than this. Hundreds of young women long, with an intense anxiety, to learn the art of cutting and fitting thoroughly.

Now, it is an actual fact, that, as a rule, dressmakers are deplorably ignorant of even the first principles of their profession. The people are beginning to open their eyes to this fact, and schools for dressmaking are now established in various parts of the country. But it is not convenient to take long journeys, or spend a season, at great expense, away from home, in order to learn the art, if it can as readily be learned from textbooks at home. It has been a favorite boast with the average dressmaker that she never served an apprenticeship at the business, but "picked it up," a fact patent to all of her customers. Ladies are tired of this slipshod way of having their dresses made, and now that every second family in a village goes abroad, something after the French style of fitting and making is demanded. American ladies use rich goods. The wife and daughters of a tradesman dress in silks and satins every day, and the American woman has a good figure when it is not distorted by a wretchedly fitting dress. So the village seamstress may as well awaken to the fact that she must take a preparatory course of instruction before putting

her shears into the rich materials now used in even plain outfits.

If she is not obstinately and blindly wedded to her native ignorance, and prejudiced, she will soon learn the few simple but also perfect and absolute rules which govern the whole business, and find that when she has once mastered them it will be absolutely impossible to make a mistake. In these days of progress, when a new creed is formulated, there is room left for amendments. So in the simplest designs of use in our everyday work we need to leave a margin for improvements. Each year will change the cut of a sleeve, the length of a waist, the slope of a shoulder-it may be only an inch-but as some one has wittily said, an inch taken from or added to the length of a nose would make a vast difference to the other features. The old-time seamstress who went round spring and fall into country homes, carried her patterns with her, and they served for years in the same families, the difference being a seam folded in or let out. It is estimated that there are seven thousand dressmakers in the City of New York, exclusively engaged in making ladies' and children's dresses. This includes two hundred and seventy men dressmakers. The wages rate from four dollars to sixty dollars per week. The price is graded according to ability. In one establishment in New York there are sixty men dressmakers employed. The average wages are thirty-one dollars a week. Some make as high as fifty dollars per week. In all large cities, and especially in the City of New York, there is a constant demand for good fitters, at salaries ranging from fifteen to forty dollars per week.