of miscellaneous memoranda, which might be of great use to the more ample historian. We have room barely to say, it seems that young Griffin was first and last in nine battles at sea, and was from home not far from four years. When he returned he found his countrymen still advancing in their struggle for freedom, though obliged to contend with the most formidable pecuniary embarrassments. A single fact will sufficiently illustrate this. When he reached Boston he had to pay seventy dollars for his breakfast !—so greatly had the continental issue depreciated even before the close of the war. Coming home, and feeling that he had now done his full part in the regular service, he prepared for settlement in domestic life. Accordingly, on the 21st of November, 1781, he was married to Miss Rosanna Parmele, of Durham, and soon after commenced housekeeping in his native town, Guilford, Conn. While in church here, the quietude of a New England Sabbath was disturbed by the startling intelligence that the British were landing in force at some point not now distinctly recollected. The services of the sanctuary were instantly closed, and all who could do so were desired to aid in repelling the encroachments of the enemy. A patriotic old lady, whose heart seemed to be stirred to its very depth, said, "Griffin, are you not going ?" "Most certainly," was the instant response, "if I can get a horse." He went up to a Mr. Leet, who had already mounted his horse, not to go to the battle, but home, and said, "Let me have your beast?" With a tory heart and in tory style, he began to make excuses: "He couldn't get home on foot-his horse was hungry-wasn't well shod," and the like. The aforesaid old lady heard the answer, and said to Griffin, "Unhorse him! unhorse him!" Griffin was in the habit of obeying the word of command, and could not consistently hesitate now. Seizing the left foot of the unpatriotic Leet, he speedily and vigorously raised it until the rider was obliged to " go by the board," on the opposite side; when Griffin's feet instantly filled the stirrups, and he was en route for the scene of action. But the British met with a much warmer reception than they had anticipated, and the demonstration amounted to but little. This ended Griffin's military career. He passed a few years in his native town, and then moved with his rising family into what is now the town of Paris, Oneida County, N. Y. He was one of the very first settlers, and the whole country was then nearly one unbroken wilderness. Details here, however, fall not within the scope of the present paper. Scattered and poor as were the population, and difficult as it was to get from one place to another, it was not long ere the itinerant herald of the cross came along, bringing the tidings of salvation. The Rev. Jonathan Newman was the pioneer. The Rev. Robert Heath, of Mill Prison memory, had predisposed our subject to Wesleyan Methodism, and with a glad heart he made welcome to his cabin these self-sacrificing men. Griffin was a member of probably the first class ever formed in Central New York, and continued to be an ornament to the Methodist Episcopal Church down to the day of his death. As a citizen, as a civil magistrate, and as a church officer, he was all that could be desired. Many an eye will moisten as it traces these lines. He was a Christian gentleman, and everybody loved him. He was the preacher's friend, and his house was the preacher's home. One thing more, and we close an article which, though long, we trust the reader will not have found tedious. It has been stated that Griffin was released from Mill Prison on the 15th of March, 1779; and this day was ever after formally celebrated by him and his family. It formed a glorious domestic anniversary. Business was suspended, and the various branches of the family were, as far as possible, called together. On these occasions he would recount the incidents of his imprisonment; not only the incidents given in this brief narrative, but others of a more minute character. Men of true courage are always tender-hearted. Thus it was with Griffin. There were events in his history, the recital of which ever turned him into a child. He could not name them, though he had done it a thousand times before, without weeping. All who had heard him tell his stories knew beforehand when he would "choke down." Blessed man! he is now with the general assembly and Church of the firstborn. And O that the men of this generation might appreciate the debt of obligation they owe alike to the heroes of the American Revolution, and to the pioneers of American Methodism ! HOME HOME, AND THE SEWING MACHINE. men TOME is the appropriate sphere of woman. Marriage is a dictate of nature, and expresses the relation that adult and women should sustain to each other. Their mental, affectional, and physical organization; their affinities, and the comparative number of the two sexes, plainly indicate its propriety. It is honorable in the sight of God and man, and the most important institution of society. Wellordered households are the foundation of virtue and prosperity. The altar of liberty must be reared by the hearth-stone, and the fire upon each must be fed by the same hands. Home is the nursery of virtue, both public and private. Man's and woman's duties center there and radiate thence. All other relations should be secondary and subsidiary to these. Home consists, not so much in a splendid house, and rich furniture, and costly living, as it does in furnishing a condition conducive to the highest culture of the soul. Most men and women have an ideal of home. Such is the nature of the domestic sentiment, that it forms an easy alliance with the imagination, and borrows from it both a creative and an enlivening influence. There is something more within the walls of the humblest cottage than the eye can discern. Bench, table, and bed are not the only furniture. All the fancies and impulses that most profoundly stir the heart of man, have their dwelling there. Beautiful, indeed, is that provision of our Creator, by which every man and woman has a birthright in the gladness and glory of the universe, because of their sympathy with home. Here, too, should be fostered those tastes, affections, and aspirations which render man acceptable in the sight of God. The agencies that move the world are nurtured in homes. It is the divine nursery of science and art, of philanthropy and piety. It is sanctified in memory by a thousand incidents. The fireside, the arm-chair, the cradle of infancy, and the couch of age; the family table, and the morning and the evening prayer; the chamber of sickness and death, beget an undying attachment. The true glory and security of a nation, then, consists, not so much in armies and navies, palaces and treasures, as in its multiplied, virtuous, and genial homes. Upon these can be expended the purest and warmest patriotism. We want societies for the improvement of homes quite as much as for improving prisons and hospitals. Woman can have no more noble and patriotic mission than home necessities demand. Her proper influence here will more effectually quell dis order upon public occasions, than her presence at the polls, or in the halls of legislation. But it is too frequently the case that the housewife's cares absorb her time so much that she has but little left for educating her children and for the culture of her own mind, as deficiencies are disclosed and higher aspirations developed. Hence maternal influence is too little felt in society. The young and frivolous give it its tone. Woman's influence is too valuable to be thus neutralized. Her delicate sensibilities and virtuous inclinations indicate her as the pioneer in moral, æsthetic and hygienic reforms. To secure this end matrimony should afford opportunities for the health and beauty of maidenhood to ripen into graceful and dignified womanhood, and time for the many important services woman can render. Numerous obstacles, unavoidable in a measure, perhaps, have heretofore supervened to prevent this desirable consummation. We have, however, profound faith in the power of human genius, in view of the mechanical triumphs of the last century. The steam-engine, the railroad and steamboat, the spinning jenny, the cotton gin, the printing-press, the nail and the pin machines, and the magnetic telegraph have revolutionized the world of manufactures and commerce. Aid has now been vouchsafed to woman in the household, and genius has achieved in her behalf one of its grandest triumphs. We allude to the sewing machine. The point is well established, that nearly all kinds of sewing can be done better and cheaper by machinery than by hand, and at a vast saving of time and health. Although the evils of hand-sewing have fallen heavily enough upon wives and mothers, with their alternation of labor, the effects upon the health, virtue, and happiness of professed needle-women are frightful in the extreme. Poverty, sickness, hunger, rags, and general squalor are too generally its concomitants. Avarice, extortion, and lust here find their victims. The confined attitude, the stooping posture, cramping the lungs and stomach, retarding respiration, circulation, and digestion, the curvature of the spine, the paralyzing stillness of the limbs, the minute, unremitting attention required, the strain upon the eyes over a monotonous task, have told with terrible effect upon the needle-woman. And what are its wages? A bed of straw, a crust of bread, and rags. It is the most effective device of the arch enemy of mankind to perpetuate the original curse beginning with the fig-leaf aprons in the garden of paradise. War and the wardrobe may count their victims by millions. The glittering needle and the gleaming sword have pierced the hearts of the lovely, and drank the blood of the brave. A change is taking place. The sewing machine has revolutionized the drudgery of the seamstress. Doubtless this will cause individual suffering, but where it will inconvenience one needlewoman it will benefit ten housekeepers. No great change can take place in society without deleteriously affecting some. Should the prayers of saints be answered, and the millennium down upon us now, judges, and lawyers, and manufacturers of locks and safes might be injured in their business. If thousands of women were released from bondage of any kind, it would momentarily derange the channels of business, but the community would gain by it. Still the change now will not be so great as has. been imagined. New applications of sewing will be invented; garments will be better made, and seamstresses will be better paid. At any rate, society will be greatly benefited by the change which the sewing machine will effect. Prior to 1846 no sewing-machine had been constructed of any great practical value. In 1846 Elias Howe, Jr., patented his shuttle "lock-stitch" machine. The commissioner of patents remarks, in the report for that year, that this inventor had struck out a new path, and that it would be impossible by any other known means to sew as fast or as well. The stitch invented by Mr. Howe is illustrated by the following diagram, and may be made by hand, thus: Take a soft piece of cloth, (c,) and two needles threaded in the ordinary manner. Tie the long ends of the thread together, and thrust the needle h head foremost partly through the cloth. Withdraw it slightly, and through the loop formed of the thread e, between the cloth and the eye of the needle c, pass the other needle, carrying the thread z. Withdraw the needle h, inclosing the lower thread, z, and the two will be interlocked, and the point of interlocking may be drawn into the fabric. Each surface of the cloth will show a seam of similar appearance, a single line of thread extending from stitch to stitch. The thread e, seen up the upper surface, is not seen at each alternate stitch upon the lower surface and the upper surface, but that seen upon the lower surface is exclusively the thread z. In making this stitch, Mr. Howe employed a needle with the eye near the point, to carry the upper thread through the fabric. The loop being formed below the cloth, the lower thread was passed through it by a shuttle, carrying a small bobbin, upon which it was wound. The cloth to be sewed was suspended from a plate upon small pins projecting from it; and was carried forward before the needle, which had a horizontal action. This machine was better adapted to seaming by giving the needle a perpendicular action, laying the cloth to be sewed upon a plate beneath the needle, and moving it forward by a wheel with points upon its periphery, which penetrated the cloth. The stitch invented by Mr. Howe is all that can be required for sewing, and no attempts have been made to improve it. The seam formed presents a beautiful appearance upon each side, and cannot be raveled; and when made of suitable thread, is as durable as the fabric sewed. Many attempts have been made to improve the shuttle sewing-machine, but with little success. Mr. A. B. Wilson patented a machine in 1851, making the Howe "lock-stitch," but by a mechanism almost totally different, in which objections to the shuttle-machine were obviated, and many improvements were added. The Wheeler & Wilson machine is constructed according to his patents; and as it combines the qualities of a good sewing machine for families and general use, we have selected it to give point to our description, without, of course, intending to VOL. XII.-39 disparage, or undervalue any of the other machines now in use. The merits of Mr. Wilson's invention consist in a "rotating hook," by which the stitch is taken; the "rough surface intermitting feed," by which the cloth is fed forward, and the length of stitch regulated ; and the "yielding spring pressure," by which the cloth is held upon the cloth plate. The stitch may be made by hand in a manner analogous to the method of making it by Mr. Wilson's invention. This is illustrated by the following figure: Take a needle, (h,) threaded in the ordinary manner, and a small ball of thread, (ƒ;) tie the ends of the threads together, leaving an inch or two of the thread (~) unrolled from the ball. Thrust the needle (h) through the fabric, head first; withdraw it slightly, enlarge the loop of the thread, (e,) and pass it around the ball of thread, (f) instead of passing the ball through it; then withdraw the needle entirely from the fabric, and draw up the loop, so that the points of the threads (e and z) interlocked, will be in the center of the fabric. In Mr. Wilson's invention the thread, upon being thrust through the fabric by an eye-pointed needle, is caught by a rotating hook; the loop is enlarged, and carried around a bobbin containing the lower thread, as the loop is carried around the ball of thread in the foregoing figure. Various appliances are furnished for regulating the width of hems, etc. 42, 42, Fig. I, represents a guage for this purpose which is attached to the fixed arm, 19, by the thumb-screw, 43, and extends down to the cloth plate, with various projections for guiding the work. It is slotted and jointed so as to be adjusted in various positions, and is removed when not in use. A smaller one, very commonly used, but not in conjunction with the larger, is fastened to the cloth plate at the screw hole, 44. A "hemmer," 48, is furnished for turning hems of any width, as 50 and 51. This is substituted for that purpose in place of the cloth presser, 20. The hem is turned and stitched in passing through the machine. Motion is communicated to the needle arm, connecting by a driving wheel which may be arranged so as to give more or less strokes of the needle at each tread of the foot. Five is the usual number, and from seven hundred to one thousand stitches are made per minute, while the number that can be made by hand is ordinarily not more than forty or fifty. Seven hundred stitches form upward of one yard of seam with fifteen stitches to the inch, and about the same length of thread is required as in ordinary back stitching. The machine makes but little noise, so little that one hundred operated in the same room would not interrupt ordinary conversation. The bearings are so light and the friction surfaces so small that the driving power is merely nominal. The machine is placed upon a neat work-table, or furnished with a cabinet, as at the head of this article, and driven by a band and sandal treadles. The position of the operator is healthful, and the exercise of the lower limbs in using it is invigorating. Baby-dresses and web-like mouchoirs are headed with pearly stitches; a shirt bosom, covered with tiny plates, is completed almost while a lady could sew a needleful of thread; three dresses, heavy or fine, are made in less time than is required to fit one; coats, vests, and the entire catalogue of the wardrobe, are gone through with railroad celerity. In hemming, seaming, quilting, gathering hemming, felling, and all sorts of fancy stitching, it rivals the daintiest work of the whitest fingers, and works with more thoroughness than the most careful housewife. The housekeeper is soon surprised at the facility with which she runs up seams, sews on facings, tucks, hems, plaits, gathers, quilts, stitches on cord, sews on bindings, etc., and wonders how she has |