Nothing can more plainly show the regard in which women were held in Virginia in the middle of the eighteenth century than the entries in the accounts of Colonel William Byrd of his visits to Virginia homes. He was an accomplished and cultivated gentleman, who wrote with much intelligence and power when relating his interviews with men, or discussing what might be termed masculine subjects, but who revealed his opinion of the mental capacity of the fair sex by such side glimpses as these: “We supped about nine and then prattled with the ladies.” “Our conversation with the ladies was like whip-syllabub, very pretty but nothing in it.” He also makes rather coarse jokes about Miss Thekky and her maiden state, which was of course most deplorable in his and every one else’s eyes; and he alludes disparagingly to Mrs. Chiswell as “one of those absolute rarities, a very good old woman.” The Virginia women are said by other authors of that day to have been “bounteous in size and manner.” M. Droz wrote of them:-- Most of the women are quite pretty and insinuating in their manner if they find you so. When you ask them if they would like to have husbands they reply with a good grace that it is just what they desire. For many years an epidemic of sentimentality and mawkishness seemed to everywhere prevail in America, and indeed everywhere among English-speaking peoples, and seemed also to be universally admired. The women in America were, as Doctor Shippen wrote, “languishingly sweet.” This insipidity pervaded the letters of the times, it showed in all the diaries and journals that record conversations. Long and vapid discourses on love and matrimony and “Platonicks” were held even between comparative strangers. Even so sprightly and intelligent a journalist as Sally Wister records her exceedingly flippant conversation with young officers of new acquaintance, who, within a few hours of introduction, suggested matrimony and love and kisses, and punctuated their remarks with profanity, which they “declared was their favorite vice.” William Black, a most observant traveller, wrote of Philadelphia girls in 1744:-- One of the ladies began a discourse on love wherein she pull’d the other Sex to pieces. Setting forth the Constancy of their Sex and the Unstability of ours. Every one of the young ladies put in an Oar and helped her Out; at last being quite tired of the Subject and at a Loss what more to say the Lady that begun it turned from it artfull enough to Criticizing on Plays and their Authors, Addison, Otway, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Shakespere &c were named often in Question; the words Genius and no Genius, Invention, Poetry, Fine things, bad Language, no Style, Charming writing, Imagary and Diction, with many more Expressions which swim on the surface of Criticism seemed to have been caught by the Female Fishers for the Reputation of Wit.