collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies, in winter, are
frequently entertained either at concerts of music or assemblies, and
make a very good appearance. They are comely, and dress well, and scarce
any of them have distorted shapes. Tinctured with a Dutch education,
they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and
singular neatness. The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the
fashionable part of the fair sex in some places, is a vice with which
my countrywomen cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they
so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the
improvement of the mind; in which, I confess, we have set them the
example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable; naturally
sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more
elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable
in the sex. Our schools are in the lowest order: the instructors want
instruction; and, through a long, shameful neglect of all the arts and
sciences, our common speech is extremely corrupt, and the evidences of
a bad taste, both as to thought and language, are visible in all our
proceedings, public and private.

The history of our diseases belongs to a profession with which I am
very little acquainted. Few physicians amongst us are eminent for
their skill. Quacks abound like locusts in Egypt, and too many have
recommended themselves to a full practice and profitable subsistence.
Loud as the call is, to our shame be it remembered, we have no law
to protect the lives of the king's subjects from the malpractice of
pretenders. Any man, at his pleasure, sets up for physician, apothecary,
and chirurgeon. The natural history of this province would of itself
furnish a small volume; and, therefore, I leave this also to such as
have capacity and leisure to make useful observations in that curious
and entertaining branch of natural philosophy.