Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete eBook
Washington Irving
the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their
rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings;
nor ever opened their lips excepting to say “yah
Mynheer,” or “yah ya Vrouw,”
to any question that was asked them; behaving, in
all things, like decent, well-educated damsels.
As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked
his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the
blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were
decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were
piously portrayed—Tobit and his dog figured
to great advantage, Haman swung conspicuously on his
gibbet, and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out
of the whale like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.
The parties broke up without noise and without confusion.
They were carried home by their 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.
