hepherd was
very strict with his flock.

"Another fashion, however, found universal favor with our elegant
ladies. A fashion so senseless that I should, certainly, have doubted
its existence if I had not, as a child, often played with my mother's
mother-of-pearl box of patches. All ladies wore patches, and my mother
always kept her box handy, its lid being provided with a small
looking-glass, so that if a patch fell off she might at once replace it
with another. These little ornaments, made of English court-plaster,
were cut in the shape of full, half and crescent moons, stars, hearts,
etc., and were stuck on the face with much forethought and ingenuity to
heighten the charms of the wearer, and to add a graceful expression to
the countenance. A row of tiny moons, gradually increasing in size from
the crescent to the full, at the outer corner of the eye, was supposed
to make that organ look larger, and to heighten its brightness. A couple
of small stars at the corner of the mouth was thought to impart an
enchantingly roguish expression to it. A patch on the cheek was thought
to bring out a dimple to advantage. There were, besides, patches of
larger size doves, cupids, suns, and others known by the general name of
'assassins,' probably because of their killing effect on masculine
hearts."

In the last analysis, the position of woman in any given period depends
upon the currently accepted philosophy underlying that period. The
philosophy of the seventeenth century that of Descartes and Leibnitz
maybe condensed in one word mechanism. Woman, with her emotional nature,
her wayward, irregular fancies, her insistence upon personal love
instead of rigid law, her lack of logic, and her perplexing, often
keenly puncturing intuitions, had no place in the well-arranged system
of Descartes and Leibnitz. It was even questioned, satirically in
France, but seriously in Germany, whether or not woman was a human
being. If not, said the learned divines who argued the question in their
pulpits, she could not be eligible to salvation. The conclusion, not
unanimous, however, finally reached was that women ought to be looked
upon as human beings, lower, of course, than man, but a grade or two
higher than the beasts of the field.

Of seventeenth century philosophers, Spinoza, "the God-intoxicated man,"
alone met any of the conscious higher needs of woman. Hence, women, by
thousands, accepted the philosophy of Spinoza under the name of
Quiet