ewis sent from Virginia to England for a wardrobe
for a young miss, a school-girl, who was his ward. The list reads
thus:--

"A cap ruffle and tucker, the lace 5 shillings per Yard,
1 pair White Stays,
8 pair White Kid gloves,
2 pair coloured kid gloves,
2 pair worsted hose,
3 pair thread hose,
1 pair silk shoes laced,
1 pair morocco shoes,
1 Hoop Coat,
1 Hat,
4 pair plain Spanish shoes,
2 pair calf shoes,
1 mask,
1 fan,
1 necklace,
1 Girdle and buckle,
1 piece fashionable Calico,
4 yards ribbon for knots,
11/2 yard Cambric,
A mantua and coat of lute-string."

In the middle of the century George Washington also sent to England for
an outfit for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis. She was four years old, and
he ordered for her, pack-thread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks, caps,
bonnets, bibs, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and
leather pumps. There were also eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs
of gloves; these with the masks show that this little girl's complexion
was also to be well guarded.

A little New England Miss Huntington, when twelve years old, was sent
from Norwich, Connecticut, to be "finished" in a Boston boarding-school.
She had twelve silk gowns, but her teacher wrote home that she must have
another gown of "a recently imported rich fabric," which was at once
bought for her because it was "suitable for her rank and station."

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a constant
succession of rich and gay fashions; for American dress was carefully
modelled upon European, especially English modes. Men's wear was as rich
as women's. An English traveller said that Boston women and men in 1740
dressed as gay every day as courtiers in England at a coronation. But
with all the richness there was no wastefulness. The sister of the rich
Boston merchant, Peter Faneuil, who built Faneuil Hall, sent her gowns
to London to be turned and dyed, and her old ribbons and gowns to be
sold. But her gowns, which are still preserved, are of magnificent
stuffs.

New Yorkers were dressed in gauzes, silks, and laces; even women Quakers
in Pennsylvania had to be warned against wearing hoop-petticoats,
scarlet shoes, and puffed and rolled hair.

The family of so frugal a man as Benjamin Franklin did not escape a
slight infection of the prevailing love for gay dress. In the
_Penns