Must not the regret of our parents be excessive, at having placed so great a difference between sisters who are so perfectly equal? Alas! we must perish from distress; for it would not be in my power even to scrawl a suppliant petition for relief, having been obliged to employ the hand of another in transcribing the request which I have now the honour to prefer to you. Condescend, sirs, to make my parents sensible of the injustice of an exclusive tenderness, and of the necessity of distributing their care and affection among all their children equally. I am, with a profound respect, sirs, your obedient servant, THE LEFT HAND. _Benjamin Franklin._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _WOMEN’S FASHIONS._ SHOULD I not keepe promise in speaking a little to Women’s fashions, they would take it unkindly. I was loath to pester better matter with such stuffe; I rather thought it meet to let them stand by themselves, like the _Quæ Genus_ in the Grammar, being Deficients, or Redundants, not to be brought under any Rule: I shall therefore make bold for this once, to borrow a little of their loose-tongued Liberty, and misspend a word or two upon their long-wasted, but short-skirted patience; a little use of my stirrup will doe no harme. _Ridentem dicere verum, quid prohibet? Gray Gravity itselfe can well beteam, That Language be adapted to the Theme. He that to Parrots speaks, must parrotize; He that instructs a foole, may act th’ unwise._ It is known more then enough, that I am neither Nigard, nor Cinick, to the due bravery of the true Gentry: if any man mislikes a bully ’mong drossock more than I, let him take her for his labour! I honour the woman that can honour her selfe with her attire: a good Text alwayes deserves a fair Margent: I am not much offended if I see a trimme, far trimmer than she that wears it: in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility will allow, I can afford with _London_ measure: but when I heare a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dresse the Queen is in this week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the court; I meane the very newest: with egge to be in it in all haste, what ever it be; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a kickable substance, than either honour’d or humour’d.