e last
two sentences, when I reflect how rude and rough these specimens of
feminine character generally were. They had a readiness with their hands
that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other heroines in Fielding's novels.
For example, I have seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for no
reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his
ears,--an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching
the very earliest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp tongue
will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their
finger-nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a
resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English
people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater degree than ourselves
by this simple and honest tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter
one another's persons; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies (for
instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be
satisfied that their belligerent propensities are kept in abeyance only by
a merciless rigor on the part of society. It requires a vast deal of
refinement to spiritualize their large physical endowments. Such being the
case with the delicate ornaments of the drawing-room, it is the less to be
wondered at that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest
kind of companionship and occupation, should carry on the intercourse of
life with a freedom unknown to any class of American females, though
still, I am resolved to think, compatible with a generous breadth of
natural propriety. It shocked me, at first, to see them (of all ages, even
elderly, as well as infants that could just toddle across the street
alone) going about in the mud and mire, or through the dusky snow and
slosh of a severe week in winter, with petticoats high uplifted above
bare, red feet and legs; but I was comforted by observing that both shoes
and stockings generally reappeared with better weather, having been
thriftily kept out of the damp for the convenience of dry feet within
doors. Their hardihood was wonderful, and their strength greater than
could have been expected from such spare diet as they probably lived upon.
I have seen them carrying on their heads great burdens under which they
walked as freely as if they were fashionable bonnets; or sometimes the
burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole person, looked at from
behind,--as in Tuscan