350 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [1/92 



On the loth of May, 1792, Rebecca, the daughter of Dr. Smith, 

 of whom we spoke a Httle way back, was married, by Bishop 

 White, to Samuel Blodget, Esq., of Boston.* A letter which fol- 

 lows will be of more interest, I fancy, to my readers of the fair 

 sex — if any such I shall have — than all other things which, up to 

 this time, I have given. And why shall such readers not be some- 

 times gratified even in the preparation of a life of a Provost and a 

 Doctor of Divinity? I leave my said fair readers of course to 

 translate any French word in the letter for themselves, hoping 

 only that meanings of some of them in the year 1792 were not 

 identical with meanings in 1880: 



Mrs, Williamiim Cadwalader to Mrs. Ridgely. 



Philadelphia, June 20, 1792. 

 My Dear Aunt : What shall I say to the girls about the bride, Becky 

 Smith's dress. She was dressed in a sprig'd muslin chemise, and wore 

 a bonnet with a curtain. The young ladies, her bridesmaids, had also 

 on chemises, but their hats ornamented. Did I write you that Miss 

 Ann Hamilton, Miss Meade, and Miss Keppele were her attendants; 

 and that she left town the Saturday following, and saw nobody on 

 Friday. There was great propriety both in her behavior and in all 

 other respects. Every thing was as it ought to be, without any affecta- 

 tion or parade. For our sweet girls I can only tell you, that they were 

 the most interesting creatures I ever saw, and that they were dressed in 

 white muslin, without any thing on their heads but a white ribbon run 

 through the hair. There was a monstrous company — forty-seven people 

 — at supper. That was perfectly elegant in every respect, and not even 

 a whisper or joke that could have raised a blush in a vestal. The young 

 men's delicacy and propriety to their wives charmed me. They did not 

 venture to speaker look at them the whole evening any further than 

 that, Archibald McCall spoke to Betsy, and Tom Ringold to Maria. 

 They had not seen them for ten days before the wedding. . . . 



Yours affectionately, 



W. Cadwalader. 

 To Mrs. Ann Ridgely, near Dover, 



But we must pass from gay subjects to such grave ones as are 

 appropriate to our pen. 



In 1792 was held in Trinity Church, New York, another Gen- 

 eral Convention of the Episcopal Church. The church of Rhode 

 Island — the last of the churches of the New England States to 



* For an account of Samuel Blodget, Esq., see Appendix, No. VII. 



