_{(please click on the image for a more detailed view)}

This antique Victorian sampler came up for sale last week at Wilkinson’s Auctioneers with an estimate of £250-£450 – not a bargain, but a fair price, and within our grasp. We planned to bid on it, but bids started at £600 and it eventually sold for £900!

It wasn’t the most colourful embroidery work for sale that day, but the skillfulness of 10-year-old Mary Maria Dagg whose work it was, was astounding. And we loved the little verse entitled `Tree of Dispassion’ on the perils of drunkenness – here it is:

The
sin of
drunkenness
expels reason,
drowns memory,
distempers the body,
defaces beauty, dimin-
ishes strength, corrupts
the blood, inflames the liver,
weakens the brain, turn men
into walking hospitals, causes in-
ternal, external, and – incurable
wounds, is a witch to the senses, a
devil to the soul, a thief to the pocket,
the beggar’s companion, a wife’s woe, and
children’s sorrow – makes man become
a beast, and a self murderer, who
drinks to others’ good health,
and robs himself
of his
own !
The
root of
all evil is
DRUNKENNESS!!

Glass of wine anyone?