of enjoyment to the simplicity of manners and the pure pleasures
which result from it. If there is a town on the American
continent where the English luxury displays its follies, it is
New York. You will find here the English fashions: in the dress
of the women you will see the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats,
and borrowed hair; equipages are rare, but they are elegant; the
men have more simplicity in their dress; they disdain gewgaws,
but they take their revenge in the luxury of the table; luxury
forms already a class of men very dangerous to society; I mean
bachelors; the expense of women causes matrimony to be dreaded by
men. Tea forms, as in England, the basis of parties of pleasure;
many things are dearer here than in France; a hairdresser asks
twenty shilling a month; washing costs four shillings a dozen."*

* Quoted by Henry Tuckerman, "America and her Commentators,"
1886.


An American writer of a later date, looking back upon his earlier
years, was impressed by this same extravagance, and his testimony
may well be used to strengthen the impression which it is the
purpose of the present narrative to convey:

"The French and British armies circulated immense sums of money
in gold and silver coin, which had the effect of driving out of
circulation the wretched paper currency which had till then
prevailed. Immense quantities of British and French goods were
soon imported: our people imbibed a taste for foreign fashions
and luxury; and in the course of two or three years, from the
close of the war, such an entire change had taken place in the