WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 279 



London and Parisian fashions; and have only re- 

 tained as much of those costumes, as is becoming 

 to the female form. This, joined to their own 

 just notions of dress, is what renders the New 

 York ladies so elegant in their attire. The way 

 they wear the Leghorn hat deserves a remark or 

 two. With us, the formal hand of the milliner 

 binds down the brim to one fixed shape, and that 

 none of the handsomest. The wearer is obliged 

 to turn her head full ninety degrees before she 

 can see the person who is standing by her side. 

 But in New York the ladies have the brim of the 

 hat not fettered with wire, or tape, or ribbon, but 

 quite free and undulating; and by applying the 

 hand to it, they can conceal or expose as much of 

 the face as circumstances require. This hiding 

 and exposing of the face, by the bye, is certainly 

 a dangerous movement, and often fatal to the. 

 passing swain. I am convinced in my own mind, 

 that many a determined and unsuspecting bache- 

 lor, has been shot down by this sudden manoeuvre, 

 before he was aware that he was within reach of 

 the battery. 



The American ladies seem to have an abhor- 

 rence (and a very just one too) of wearing caps. 

 Wlien one considers for a moment, that women: 

 wear the hair long, which nature has given them 

 both for an ornament and to keep the head warm, 

 one is apt to wonder, by what perversion of good 

 taste they can be induced to enclose it in a cap. 

 A mob cap, a lace cap, a low cap, a high cap, a flat 

 cap, a cap with ribbons dangling loose, a cap with 

 ribbons tied under the chin, a peak cap, an angular 

 cap, a round cap, and a pyramid cap ! How would 



