A Sampler Book

[nibbed]

I'm not sure why it doesn't seem to want to post the image of an antique book I found entitled Platform Echoes, that is also a book salesman's sample, written by John B. Gough. The photo I provided shows an open book with lace workings sewed throughout the pages next to samples of spines and lettering.

A Sampler Book (Platform Echoes)
Memorial to a Woman

Bought a book for a buck
with coins dug from my purse, 
musty bound leather
cloaking temperance verse;
engraved and fancy,
I was drawn to the cover,
smells of old books
oft my second choice lover;
found it packed full
lacking only one poem,
didn't open it wide
'til I got all the way home.
A book salesman's volume,
filled with choices and all,                                    
not elaborate as my Tennyson,
older, more tall.
Did Lord Tennyson choose
his extravagant cover
from similar samples
of extra fine leather?
An option of spines,
all embossed in a row?
Trim work, plain letters,
or gold leaf aglow?

A Victorian widow,
she just could not see
how ridding herself
of that old tool would be;
her loss of companion,
pining part of him there:
she sewed twenty-two workings,
into pages, so fair;
webs of filigree cotton
proved frugality's perk,
a sampler, unknown,
of another great work;
how many those hankies
were pinned, used, and sewn?
Delicately crafted
distractions, her own.