New England Manners And Customs.

Equal simplicity in dress prevailed, and a gown of bombazette — a very narrow, all-wool goods, worth from seventy-five cents to a dollar a yard, — was often worn for best during the owner's lifetime, and at her death bequeathed, with the fondly-cherished string of gold beads, to the favorite granddaughter, as a precious legacy.
For common wear, pressed home-made and home-dyed flannel in winter; and cotton and linen, woven in colored stripes or plaids, for summer, was considered plenty good enough, even for the doctor's and minister's wives. Under flannels were an unheard-of luxury. And one ceases to wonder at the frequency of hereditary consumption, in our own day, when he reads that fashionable city ladies, in the very depths of a Northern winter, walked the icy streets in thin cotton or silk stockings and low, pointed, high-heeled morocco shoes. Rubbers being then unknown, and the shoes of stout calf-skin, that their country cousins were only too glad to get, were disdained by these dainty dames as coarse and unlady-like.
A girl carded, spun, wove, bleached, and made her one white linen gown, lavishing upon it all her simple art of needlecraft, every seam and hem stitched by the old-time rule, "take up one thread and skip two," and, perhaps, embroidering a pattern of tiny sprays and eyelets upon the bosom and sleeves, to give it an air of special gentility.
Finished at last, this choice bit of girlish finery probably served its owner for a wedding-dress, and afterwards was cut up into slips for the babies.
Matrons, young as well as old, wore caps of plain white muslin, made after the same fashion as the round, sweeping caps that tidy housekeepers wear at the present day. The younger and gayer ones, who had no scruples of conscience on the subject, wore their caps adorned with bright ribbons, while the elderly and more sedate contented themselves with a plain band of black, across the front, and pinned primly at the back, without bow or knot.
After the death of Washington, in 1799 besides the band of crape that every citizen of the United States, by the desire of Congress, wore upon his left arm for thirty days, many of the loyal matrons provided themselves with mourning-cap ribbons,

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