be held in
mental esteem as a sex, though not always overtly, as we have seen, she
was in Virginia still the lady, the almsgiver, the comforter and
inspirer, but not the fellow-laborer, the equal in danger and toil and
therefore in counsel. For it cannot be denied, save by him who has
studied history with blind eyes, that in the matter of descent the
colonists of Virginia were far superior to those who made to blossom the
bleak shores of Massachusetts Bay. On both records there are too many
blots of birth to make it safe for the ancestral tuft-hunter to delve
very deep into the past in his search on American soil; but the balance
of rank is with the Virginian. Therefore it is that, while we
instinctively regard the early New England woman, taken collectively, as
a worker, a true colonist, we turn to the representative Virginia woman
of the same day with the expectation of seeing a dame dressed in a short
skirt of divers colors, with huge ruff and high-heeled shoes, with
mincing gait and some pretty little affectations of speech and bearing,
and we are not disappointed in the expectation.

There is another very important influence in the result of Southern
culture as discriminated from that of the North,--the existence of
slavery. Though in some of the Northern colonies there was Indian slave
labor, there was but little of pure menial service in the household
itself. The New England woman, as we shall see more clearly in the next
chapter, was her own servant; she was the worker as well as the lady of
the house. It was not so in Virginia. From the day--ill-omened in many
respects, but powerful in formative effect upon the culture it
modified--when the Dutchman left behind him his twenty negro slaves, the
conditions of servitude in the Virginia plantations were altered; and
when the plantations had become a colony, slavery was well established.
It was still held in disfavor by many, at home and abroad; but it had
come to remain for years and even centuries. The consequence of the
importation and constant increase of slave labor was felt in many ways,
but in none so strongly as in the conditions of the household. The
Virginia lady had her troops of servants--not so many at first, but
still in sufficient numbers to save her any need of personal labor,
while her sister of the North was compelled, because of circumstances if
not of choice, to do with her own hands the daily tasks that arise in
the well-ordered household. True