ir own carriages, that is to say, by the vehicles
nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to
keep a wagon. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to their
respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door;
which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect
simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor
should it at the present. If our great-grandfathers approved of the
custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to
say a word against it.

CHAPTER IV.

In this dulcet period of my history, when the beauteous island of
Manna-hata presented a scene the very counterpart of those glowing
pictures drawn of the golden reign of Saturn, there was, as I have before
observed, a happy ignorance, an honest simplicity prevalent among its
inhabitants, which, were I even able to depict, would be but little
understood by the degenerate age for which I am doomed to write. Even the
female sex, those arch innovators upon the tranquillity, the honesty, and
grey-beard customs of society, seemed for a while to conduct themselves
with incredible sobriety and comeliness.

Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously
pomatomed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a
little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their
petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous
dyes--though I must confess these gallant garments were rather short,
scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which
generally equalled that of the gentleman's small clothes; and what is
still more praiseworthy, they were all of their own manufacture--of which
circumstance, as may well be supposed, they were not a little vain.

These were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the
Bible, and wore pockets--ay, and that too of a goodly size, fashioned with
patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the
outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles, where all good
housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at
hand, by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed; and I
remember there was a story current, when I was a boy, that the lady of
Wouter Van Twiller once had occasion to empty her right pocket in search
of a wooden ladle, when the contents filled a