d some very disgusting accounts are
given of methods to dress the hair so it would "keep safely" for a
month. The Abbe Robin wrote of New England women in 1781:

"The hair of the head is raised and supported upon cushions to an
extravagant height somewhat resembling the manner in which the
French ladies wore their hair some years ago. Instead of powdering
they often wash the head, which answers the purpose well enough as
their own hair is commonly of an agreeable light color, but the
more fashionable among them begin to adopt the European fashion of
setting off the head to the best advantage."

The fashion of the roll was of much importance, and various shaped rolls
were advertised; we find one of "a modish new roll weighing but 8 ounces
when others weigh fourteen ounces." We can well believe that such a
heavy roll made poor Anna Winslow's head "ach and itch like anything." A
Salem hair-dresser, who employed twelve barbers, advertised thus in
1773: "Ladies shall be attended to in the polite constructions of rolls
such as may tend to raise their heads to any pitch they desire."

The grotesqueness of such adornment found frequent ridicule in prose and
verse. One poet sang:

"Give Chloe a bushel of horsehair and wool,
Of paste and pomatum a pound,
Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull
And gauze to encompass it round.

"Of all the gay colours the rainbow displays
Be those ribbons which hang on her head,
Be her flowers adapted to make the folks gaze,
And about the whole work be they spread.

"Let her flaps fly behind for a yard at the least,
Let her curls meet just under her chin,
Let those curls be supported to keep up the list,
With an hundred instead of one pin."

We can easily see that after such rough treatment the hair needed
restoring waters; and indeed from earliest times hair-restorers and
hair-dyes did these "vain ancients" use. "Women with juice of herbs gray
locks disguised." In these days of manifold mysterious nostrums that
gild the head of declining age and make glad the waste places on bald
young masculine pates, let us read the simple receipts of the good old
times:

"Take half a pound of Aqua Mellis in the Springtime of the Year,
warm a little of it every morning when you rise in a Sawcer, and
tie a little Spunge to a fine Box combe, and dip it in the water
and th