FOURTH JOURNEY. 



231 



This, joined to their own just notions of dress, is what 

 renders the E"ew 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 riband, 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 (aud 

 a very just one too) of wearing caps. When one con 

 siders 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 ribands dangling loose, a cap 

 with ribands 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 ladies are per- 

 suaded that the head can be ornamented without a cap. 

 A rose-bud or two, a woodbine, or a sprig of eglantine, 



