years, to whom, even if she is black, deformed, and the meanest hireling
household drudge, her dress, when she is to be seen of men, is not the
object of a watchful solicitude at least next to that which she feels
for her reputation. Among the sharpest of Douglas Jerrold's unmalicious
witticisms was his saying, that Eve ate the apple that she might dress.

_Mrs. Grey_. Eve's daughters--two of them, at least--are inexpressibly
obliged to you for your defence of the sex against the valorous Tomes.
Another time, pray, leave us to our fate. But, Laura, do look here! See
these hideous peaked and horned head-dresses of the fifteenth century.
That one looks like an Old-Dominion coffee-pot with wings. How
frightful! how uncomfortable! how inconvenient! How could the women wear
such things?

_Miss Larches_. Perfectly ridiculous! How could they get into their
carriages with those steeples on their heads? and how they must have
been in the way at the opera!

_Grey_. Miss Larches forgets. These head-dresses, monstrous as they are,
are not exposed to the objection of being inconsistent with the habits
of life of those who wore them, as so many of the fashions of later
periods and of the present day are. There were no such vehicles as
she is thinking of until more than a century after these stupendous
head-dresses were worn, until which time ladies very rarely used even
a covered wagon as a means of locomotion; and these steeple-crowned
ladies, and many generations after them, had passed away before the
performance of the first opera.

_Miss Larches_. No carriages? Why, how did they go to parties? No opera?
What did they do on winter evenings when there were no parties?