" When calves were killed for family use, the skins were tanned and kept until the peripatetic shoemaker, who traveled through the country, made his annual visit, when he halted long enough to make shoes for the elders, the children and the servants. The tailoress, too, made yearly or semi-yearly visits and undertook to turn the homespun cloth into garments. The coming of the mantua-maker, with her European patterns, created a lively stir among the matrons and maidens. Sewing in those days was done with fine linen thread, that even yet defies time and wear to destroy it."

Among the Dutch, the opulent burghers compared

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

to their wives and daughters as the peacock does to the hen. The women's dress was sober, but the men's many coats, their silk and velvet small-clothes, their silver buttons ' and fine linen stood for a good deal of money in each individual instance. The English colonial gentlemen did not stint themselves, but kept as close to the models of the London tailors iis time and distance would permit. Lacking any other exemplar for such display, they could find one in the €quii)ment3 of the British officers stationed in New York. Captain Cresar Carter, who was stationed there in 1692, was the envied possessor of a wardrobe which cost nearly a thousand dollars outside of his military accoutrements. Jacques Cosseau, a merchant who was a bankrupt before his death, in 1682, possessed but three old coats, the same number of old shirts, two pair of worn-out breeches and one neckcloth ; but Dr. Jacob De Lange, a prosperous professional gentleman, rejoiced in this sort of wardrobe, --