-fashioned farthingale,[22] the
ladies design to go on in that dress. And since it is presumed your
worship will not suppress them by force, your petitioner humbly
desires you would order, that ruffs may be added to the dress; and
that she may be heard by her counsel, who has assured your
petitioner, he has such cogent reasons to offer to your court, that
ruffs and farthingales are inseparable; and that he questions not
but two-thirds of the greatest beauties about town will have
cambric collars on their necks before the end of Easter Term next.
He further says, that the design of our great-grandmothers in this
petticoat, was to appear much bigger than the life; for which
reason, they had false shoulder-blades, like wings, and the ruff
above mentioned, to make their upper and lower parts of their
bodies appear proportionable; whereas the figure of a woman in the
present dress, bears (as he calls it) the figure of a cone, which
(as he advises) is the same with that of an extinguisher, with a
little knob at the upper end, and widening downward, till it ends
in a basis of a most enormous circumference.

"Your petitioner therefore most humbly prays, that you would
restore the ruff to the farthingale, which in their nature ought to
be as inseparable as the two Hungarian twins.[23]

"And your Petitioner shall ever pray."

I have examined into the allegations of this petition, and find, by
several ancient pictures of my own predecessors, particularly that of
Dame Deborah Bickerstaff, my great-grandmother, that the ruff and
farthingale are made use of as absolutely necessary to preserve the
symmetry of the figure; and Mrs. Pyramid Bickerstaff, her second sister,
is recorded in our family-book, with some observations to her
disadvantage, as the first female of our house that discovered, to any
besides her nurse and her husband, an inch below her chin or above her
instep. This convinces me of the reasonableness of Mrs. Prim's demand;
and therefore I shall not allow the reviving of any one part of that
ancient mode, except the whole is complied with. Mrs. Prim is therefore
hereby empowered to carry home ruffs to such as she shall see in the
above-mentioned petticoats, and require payment on demand.

* * * * *

Mr. Bickerstaff has under consideration the offer from the