uffed cushion or roll, and mixed with
powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short
curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes,
jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a
yard in height." Fashion in this wise had gone to even greater extremes
in other lands; but there was not much of colonial simplicity about this
sort of thing. We are not told directly whether Abigail Foote, the
spinner and carder, wore such a monstrosity as that described when she
went to pay her "swinging visit" to the Otis family; but even if she
personally avoided such extremes, yet these flagrant contradictions were
in constant evidence in the life and garb of the New England woman of
that day, nor were her more southern sisters far behind her in their
disregard of consistency, even though they manifested it in variant
ways. In good and evil projections, all these things have survived and
combined in the American woman of the present, though not in their old
aspects.

It was about the beginning of the named period that there happened in
Virginia a charming incident in which is displayed a feminine trait
worthy of chronicle, even if universal in nationality. At the famous
college of William and Mary there lived a bachelor professor by the name
of John Camm. He had reached the period of life that we euphemistically
call "middle age" when there came the end of his bachelorhood in this
wise: Among those who listened to his exhortations--for he was preacher
as well as professor--was Miss Betsy Hansford, of the family of the
Hansford of "Bacon's Rebellion," known as rebel or martyr according to
the sympathies of the speaker. She was a pretty maiden, and she was
besieged with offers from the youth of the neighborhood, among others,
from one who, having himself unsuccessfully pleaded his suit, bethought
him of obtaining the services of the gifted divine as intermediary. The
latter was willing to undertake the somewhat delicate part assigned to
him, and he proceeded to show to the obdurate maiden that matrimony was
a holy and much-to-be-desired state, fortifying his position with
citations from the Bible. When it came to the quotation of texts,
however, Miss Betsy proved herself an adept by telling Mr. Camm that her
reason for refusing her young suitor might be discovered by an
examination of II. Samuel, xii, 7. Home fared Mr. Camm in search of a
Bible, for the young lady refused to le