304 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



three, in Broadway. The stranger "will at once see that 

 they have rejected the extravagant superfluities which ap- 

 pear in the London and Parisian fashions ; and have only 

 retained 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 mil- 

 liner binds down the brim to one fixed shape, and that 

 none of the handsomest. The wearer is obliged to turn her 

 hea,d 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 

 bachelor, 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 abhorrence (and a 

 very just one too) of wearing caps. When 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 Canova's Venus look in a mob 

 cap ? If there be any ornament to the head in wearing 

 a cap, it must surely be a false ornament. The American 



