Manners and Customs in Colonial Days 91 



craze for wigs extended even to the lowest classes, and the 

 sailors and the rustics imitated their betters by permitting 

 their hair to grow long and weaving in with it horse hair in 

 order to give it length and quantity, the whole being protected 

 by an eelskin. By the time of the Revolution, people began 

 once more to wear their own hair, dressed into a queue and 

 plentifully sprinkled wdth powder, which, however, became so 

 scarce during the war that flour was substituted. 



The women followed the whole range of fashions in the 

 matter of head-dress, even to the towering mountain of hair 

 which stood above the head higher than the length of the face 

 below it. The French Revolution effected a change in this 

 respect, and the ancient republics of Greece not only furnished 

 democratic ideals of government for the French party, but 

 fashions as well for their imitators in America. The head cov- 

 ering varied from a simple hood of linen for the women of the 

 lower classes, to the immense beaver with feathers, buckles, 

 and lace worn by their wealthier sisters. Cloth was so expen- 

 sive that it was no infrequent thing for a man in moderate 

 circumstances to have a suit turned inside out when it began 

 to show wear, in order to make it last longer and to save 

 expense. The shoemaker, as mentioned above, not only trav- 

 elled from place to place, but the tailor and mantua-maker, or 

 dressmaker, as well; they were, in fact, journeymen. 



There was a great distinction between the various classes 

 of society. It was to be expected in an English colony — and 

 New York was probably the most aristocratic of them all — ■ 

 that the social distinctions of Old England should be trans- 

 planted to the new field. There were, then, three classes in' 

 the social scale: the gentry, the tradesmen, and the yeomanry, 

 of whom the last were, of course, the most numerous. The 

 line between the gentry, those of landed estates or descended 



