e, like
that of Holland, was in all ways, materially and morally, preeminently
_clean_. There are many faults to be attributed to our ancestors north
and south; but they had great virtues as well, and this of cleanliness
in the home was one, and a great one. Even at this early day there was
plenty of roystering and even vice in the colonies, more especially in
Virginia, where the gay young blades ruffled it in imitation of the
sparks of the court of the Stuarts; but the home was still preserved
free from contamination. Woman was from the first held as a sacred
thing, as a being to be reverenced and even worshipped, not with the
affected gallantry of the English cavaliers or the French exquisites,
but in all honesty and honor. They knew her value, these men of the old
colonies; and they felt that an affront to her purity and virtue was a
blow at the very foundation of the country they were learning to love.
So it was that in America, as nowhere else, woman was in the
mid-colonial days held in honor and honest reverence, and so it was that
the American home, founded amid the clamor of the war-whoop and standing
as the true stronghold of civilization, grew to be the finest emblem of
the spirit of the new land and the noblest monument to the character and
influence of its women.

CHAPTER VI

THE LATER COLONIAL PERIOD

Though perhaps rather a ramification than an inherent part of the
history of woman, the subject of dress among the female colonists, at
least in New England, is one of too great interest to permit it to be
passed over in silence in a book concerning the women of America. From
the very first--retracing our steps somewhat in order to obtain a
complete view of the matter--the question of female dress was one that
in New England was constantly giving grave offence and even scandal to
the more serious of the colonists. Sumptuary laws were passed again and
again, their very repetition showing how helpless was legislation to
cope with the conditions confronting it in the matter of feminine love
for gauds. As early as 1634 there was enacted a law which forbade any
person, either man or woman, from making or buying any apparel, either
woollen or silk or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, or thread,
under the penalty of forfeiture of said clothes. Gold and silver
girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats were prohibited by the
same law; but the planters were permitted to wear out such apparel as