when attempted, do not
often succeed well. The two sexes can hardly mix for the greater
part of a day without great restraint and ennui; it is quite
contrary to their general habits; the favourite indulgences of
the gentlemen (smoking cigars and drinking spirits), can neither
be indulged in with decency, nor resigned with complacency.

The ladies have strange ways of adding to their charms. They
powder themselves immoderately, face, neck, and arms, with
pulverised starch; the effect is indescribably disagreeable by
daylight, and not very favourable at any time. They are also
most unhappily partial to false hair, which they wear in
surprising quantities; this is the more to be lamented, as they
generally have very fine hair of their own. I suspect this
fashion to arise from an indolent mode of making their toilet,
and from accomplished ladies' maids not being very abundant; it
is less trouble to append a bunch of waving curls here, there,
and every where, than to keep their native tresses in perfect
order.

Though the expense of the ladies' dress greatly exceeds, in
proportion to their general style of living, that of the ladies
of Europe, it is very far (excepting in Philadelphia) from being
in good taste. They do not consult the seasons in the colours or
in the style of their costume; I have often shivered at seeing a
young beauty picking her way through the snow with a pale
rose-coloured bonnet, set on the very top of her head: I knew one
young lady whose pretty little ear was actually frostbitten from
being thus exposed. They never wear muffs or boots, and appear
extremely shocked at the sight of comfortable walking shoes and
cotton stockings, even when they have to step to their sleighs
over ice and snow. They walk in the middle of winter with their
poor little toes pinched into a miniature slipper, incapable of
excluding as much moisture as might bedew a primrose. I must say
in their excuse, however, that they have, almost universally,
extremely pretty feet. They do not walk well, nor, in fact, do
they ever appear to advantage when in movement. I know not why
this should be, for they have abundance of French dancing-masters
among them, but somehow or other it is the fact. I fancied I
could often trace a mixture of affectation and of shyness in
their little mincing unsteady step, and the ever changing
position of the hands. They do not dance well; perhaps I should
rather say they do not look well w