the fierceness with which weaker sisters were attacked, and
perhaps have sought to change the attitude of this chronic fault-
finder; "a sincere, witty and valiant grumbler," but always a
grumbler, to whom the fashions of the time seemed an outrage on
common sense. He devotes a separate section of his book to them,
and the delinquencies of women in general because they were
"deficients or redundants not to be brought under any rule," and
therefore not entitled to "pester better matter with such stuff,"
and then announces that he proposes, "for this once to borrow a
little of their loose-tongued liberty, and mis-spend a word or two
upon their long-waisted but short-skirted patience." "I honor the
woman that can honor herself with her attire," he goes on, his
wrath rising as he writes; "a good text always deserves a fair
margent, but as for a woman who lives but to ape the newest court-
fashions, I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the
product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing; fitter
to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than either
honored or humored. To speak moderately, I truly confess, it is
beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how those women
should have any true grace or valuable virtue, that have so little
wit as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garbs, as not only
dismantles their native, lovely lustre, but transclouts them into
gaunt bar-geese, ill-shapen, shotten shell-fish, Egyptian
hieroglyphics, or at the best into French flirts of the pastry,
which a proper English woman should scorn with her heels. It is no
marvel they wear trails on the hinder part of their heads; having
nothing it seems in the forepart but a few squirrels' brains to
help them frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another.... We
have about five or six of them in our colony; if I see any of them
accidentally, I cannot cleanse my fancy for a month after.... If