Leather was much used, especially in the form of tanned buckskin breeches and the deerskin hunters' jackets, which have always and deservedly been a favorite wear, since they are one of the most appropriate, useful, comfortable, and picturesque gar ments ever worn by men in any active outdoor life. Soon in the larger cities and among wealthy folk a much more elaborate and varied style of dress became fashionable. The dress of little girls in families of wealth was certainly almost as formal and elegant as the dress Calash, 1780 of their mammas, and it was a very hampering and stiff dress. They wore vast hoop-petticoats, heavy stays, and high-heeled shoes. Their complexions U were objects of special care; they wore masks of cloth or velvet to protect them from the tanning rays of the sun, and long-armed gloves. Little Dolly Payne, who afterwards became the wife of President Madison, went to school wearing "a white linen mask to keep every ray of sunshine from the complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and arms." Our present love of outdoor life, of athletic sports, and our indifference to being sunburned, makes such painstaking vanity seem most unbearably tiresome. In 1737 Colonel John Lewis sent from Virginia to England for a wardrobe for a young miss, a school-girl, who was his ward. The list reads thus: "A cap ruffle and tucker, the lace 5 shillings per Yard, 1 pair White Stays, 8 pair White Kid gloves, 2 pair coloured kid gloves, I pair silk shoes laced, I pair morocco shoes, 4 pair plain Spanish shoes, 2 pair calf shoes, I mask, I fan, I necklace, 1 Girdle and buckle, I piece fashionable Calico, 4 yards ribbon for knots, 11⁄2 yard Cambric, A mantua and coat of lute string." In the middle of the century George Washington also sent to England for an outfit for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis. She was four years old, and he ordered for her, pack-thread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks, caps, bonnets, bibs, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and leather pumps. There were also eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs of gloves; these with the masks show that this little girl's complexion was also to be well guarded. New Pumpkin Hood, 1800 A little England Miss Huntington, when twelve years old, was sent from Norwich, Connecticut, to be "finished" in a Boston boarding-school. She had twelve silk gowns, but her teacher wrote home that she must have another gown of "a recently imported rich fabric," which was at once bought |