NEW YORK.                                  187
 

CHAPTER IV,
 

Containing further particulars of the Golden Age,
and what constituted a fine Lady and Gentleman
in the days of Walter the Doubter.

In this dulcet period of my history, when the
beauteous island of Mannahata 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 gray-beard customs of society, seemed for a
while to conduct themselves with incredible so¬
briety 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