The opening phrase on this sampler, “Kind angels watch this sleeping bust till Jeus [sic] comes to raise the just then may I wake with sweet surprise and in my saviours [sic] image rise,” likely comes from an epitaph published in the 1856 volume Epitaphs for Country Churchyards, by Augustus John Cuthbert Hare (British, 1834–1903). Hare, an artist and humorist, collected and documented epitaphs from people across British society who he encountered on his travels around the country. Another line from the book, “This work in hand my friends may have when I am dead and in my grave,” was commonly embroidered on samplers to suggest that the embroidery would live on—kept and treasured even after the maker died.