ers? Were they such models of
bodily perfection as is usually claimed?

If we look at the early colonial days, we are at once met by the fact, that
although families were then often larger than is now common, yet this
phenomenon was by no means universal, and was balanced by a good many
childless homes. Of this any one can satisfy himself by looking over any
family history; and he can also satisfy himself of the fact,--first pointed
out, I believe, by Mrs. Ball,--that third and fourth marriages were then
obviously and unquestionably more common than now. The inference would seem
to be, that there is a little illusion about the health of those days, as
there is about the health of savage races. In both cases, it is not so much
that the average health is greater under rude social conditions, as that
these conditions kill off the weak, and leave only the strong. Modern
civilized society, on the other hand, preserves the health of many men and
women--and permits them to marry, and become parents--who under the
severities of savage life or of pioneer life would have died, and given way
to others.

On this I will not dwell; because these primeval ladies were not strictly
our grandmothers, being farther removed. But of those who were our
grandmothers,--the women of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary
epochs,--we happen to have very definite physiological observations
recorded; not very flattering, it is true, but frank and searching. What
these good women are in the imagination of their descendants, we know. Mrs.
Stowe describes them as "the race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls that
used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat New England
kitchens of olden times;" and adds, "This race of women, pride of olden
time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily
fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant
of common things."

What, now, was the testimony of those who saw our grandmothers in the
flesh? As it happens, there were a good many foreigners, generally
Frenchmen, who came to visit the new Republic during the presidency of
Washington. Let us take, for instance, the testimony of the two following.

The Abbe Robin was a chaplain in Rochambeau's army during the Revolution,
and wrote thus in regard to the American ladies in his "Nouveau Voyage
dans l'Amerique Septentrionale," published in 1782:--

"They are tall and well-proportioned; their feature