tailors
make a man; it were well if nineteen could make a woman to her mind. If
tailors were men indeed well furnished, but with more moral principles,
they would disdain to be led about like apes by such mimic marmosets. It
is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them to spend their
lives in making fiddle-cases for futilous women's fancies; which are the
very pettitoes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys.... It
is no little labor to be continually putting up English women into
outlandish casks; who if they be not shifted anew once in a few months
grow too sour for their husbands.... He that makes coats for the moon
had need take measure every noon, and he that makes for women, as often
to keep them from lunacy."

Indeed Ward becomes genuinely excited over the matter, and says some
really bitter things: "I shall make bold for this once to borrow a
little of their long-waisted but short skirted patience.... It is beyond
the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women should have any
true grace, or valuable virtue, that have so little wit as to disfigure
themselves with such exotic garbes, as not only dismantle their native
lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant-bar-geese, ill
shapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphics, or at the best French
flirts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorn with
her heels...."

The raillery became more frequent and certainly much more good-natured
in the eighteenth century. Philip Fithian, a Virginia tutor, writing in
1773, said in his _Diary_: "Almost every Lady wears a red Cloak; and
when they ride out they tye a red handkerchief over their Head and face,
so that when I first came into Virginia, I was distressed whenever I saw
a Lady, for I thought she had the toothache."

In fact, the subject sometimes inspired the men to poetry, as may be
seen from the following specimen:

"Young ladies, in town, and those that live 'round,
Let a friend at this season advise you;
Since money's so scarce, and times growing worse,
Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.

"First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride,
Wear none but your own country linen,
Of Economy boast, let your pride be the most,
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.

"What if home-spun, they say, is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once i