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Special Dinners, Dances and Luncheons 521 |
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had been ransacked. The men in wigs and gold-embroidered coats of satin and velvet offered snuff from jewelled boxes purporting to be heirlooms.
Others came in the character of emigrants, in the most grotesque guise—some in picturesque rags, others carrying what was supposed to be their worldly all, tied up in coloured handkerchiefs, swung on sticks over their shoulders. One Italian "dago" carried a toy monkey on a small cracked-voiced hand-organ, his wife in attendance, wearing a yellow handkerchief on her head and jingling a tambourine.
Puritan maidens in gowns of quiet tones, with white caps, kerchiefs and aprons, looked pretty and demure— by the men of their kin in wide-brimmed hats and broad white collars. They looked as if they had stepped out of Boughton's pictures.
The Dutch burghers wore breeches of abnormal size, and their "Vrowen" numberless petticoats under full-gathered skirts. Their hair was decently hidden under close muslin caps, and their cheeks rouged to look as though the blood threatened to burst through.
One who claimed descent from old Peter Stuyvesant was gotten up to resemble that worthy as nearly as possible—wooden leg and all, which was strapped to his bent knee.
The French Huguenot women's dress was pretty and becoming, with long, graceful skirt, long sleeves puffed at the elbow, and a coif upon the head. Sir John Millais' famous picture of "The Huguenot Lovers " had evidently served as model for men and maids.
Nothing, however, was more charming than the simplified adaptation of the French fashions that were worn by the colonial dames of Washington's time—the muslin lace-trimmed fichus, the powdered hair under coquettish |
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