Though the name and work of Margaret Preston had long been shrined in the hearts of a host of known friends and endeared to many unknown readers whose lives had been cheered by the buoyant hopefulness expressed in her writings, she was very modest in regard to her productions, yet held it a duty to continue writing for others the thoughts which had helped her.  When we were at supper in the home of Professor Lyle, who was gifted with an unusually poetic mind, he repeated passages from favorite authors.  On being asked if he did not sometimes write poetry, he replied that he had often written rhymes and loved to do it, but when he would afterward read Virgil and Shakespeare and Tennyson he would tear up his own verses, feeling that he ought not to make the effort.

“Then,” replied Mrs. Preston, “the gardener should not plant the seeds that bring forth the little forget-me-nots and snowdrops.  He should plant only the great multiflora roses and the Lady Bankshires and magnolias.”

Mrs. Preston spent much of her time in knitting because the weakness of her eyes made reading and writing difficult.  “Are you never tired of knitting?” I asked.  She replied that it did not tire her, and told me that Mrs. Lee said she loved to knit because she did not have to put her mind on the work.  She could think and talk as well when she was knitting for the reason that she did not have to keep her eyes nor her attention upon what she was doing.  She knew perfectly well when she came to a seam.  In a letter from a soldier to Mrs. Lee he thanked her for the socks she had sent him, and wrote; “I have fourteen pairs of socks knitted by my mother and my mother’s sisters and the Church Sewing Society, and I have not a shirt to my back nor a pair of trousers to my legs nor a whole pair of shoes to my feet.”  “But,” said Mrs. Lee as she concluded the story, “I continued to knit socks just the same.”

The first open-end thimble I ever saw was one Mrs. Preston used when I was with her at the Springs.  I remarked upon it and she said that when she used a thimble she always had that kind.  “I feel about a thimble as I do about mitts, which I always wear instead of gloves, because I like to see my fingers come through.  So I like to see my finger come through my thimble.  It is a tailor’s thimble.  Tailors always use that kind.  I do not know whether they like to see their fingers come through or not.”  I had heard it said that it takes nine tailors to make a man and now I reflected that it would take eighteen tailors to make a thimble.  Upon presenting this mathematical problem to Mrs. Preston she told me about the origin of the old saying: 

“It was not that kind of tailor at first.  In old England the custom was to announce a death by tolling a bell.  After the bell had ceased tolling, a number of strokes, called ‘tailers,’ indicated whether the death was of a child, a woman or a man; three for a child, nine for a man.  People counting would say, ‘Nine tailers, that’s a man,’ which in time became colloquially ‘Nine tailers make a man.’  When the custom became obsolete the saying remained, its application was forgotten, o was substituted for e and it was used in derogation of a most worthy and necessary member of the body politic.”