curls, or ragged ends; and each at my entrance taken with one motion,
stroking their matted locks with both hands under their coifs, mobs, or
pinners, every one of which was awry. They were all slip-shoed;
stockingless some; only under-petticoated all; their gowns, made to cover
straddling hoops, hanging trollopy, and tangling about their heels; but
hastily wrapt round them, as soon as I came up stairs. And half of them
(unpadded, shoulder-bent, pallid-lips, limber-jointed wretches)
appearing, from a blooming nineteen or twenty perhaps over-night, haggard
well-worn strumpets of thirty-eight or forty.

I am the more particular in describing to thee the appearance these
creatures made in my eyes when I came into the room, because I believe
thou never sawest any of them, much less a group of them, thus unprepared
for being seen.* I, for my part, never did before; nor had I now, but
upon this occasion, being thus favoured. If thou hadst, I believe thou
wouldst hate a profligate woman, as one of Swift's yahoos, or Virgil's
obscene harpies, squirting their ordure upon the Trojan trenches; since
the persons of such in their retirements are as filthy as their minds.--
Hate them as much as I do; and as much as I admire, and next to adore, a
truly virtuous and elegant woman: for to me it is evident, that as a neat
and clean woman must be an angel of a creature, so a sluttish one is the
impurest animal in nature. But these were the veterans, the chosen band;
for now-and-then flitted in to the number of half a dozen or more, by
turns, subordinate sinners, under-graduates, younger than some of the
chosen phalanx, but not less obscene in their appearance, though indeed
not so much beholden to the plastering focus; yet unpropt by stays,
squalid, loose in attire, sluggish-haired, uner-petticoated only as the
former, eyes half-opened, winking and pinking, mispatched, yawning,
stretching, as if from the unworn-off effects of the midnight revel; all
armed in succession with supplies of cordials (of which every one present