“A woman’s long scarlet cloak, almost new with a double cape,” had been one of the articles feloniously taken from the house of Benjamin Franklin, printer, in Philadelphia, in 1750. Debby Franklin’s dress, if we can judge from what was stolen, was a gay revel of color. Among the articles was one gown having a pattern of “large red roses and other large yellow flowers with blue in some of the flowers with many green leaves.” In the _Life of Jonathan Trumbull_ we read that when a collection was taken in the Lebanon church for the benefit of the soldiers of the Continental army, when money, jewels, clothing, and food were gathered in a great heap near the pulpit, Madam Faith Trumbull rose up, threw from her shoulders her splendid scarlet cloth cloak, a gift from Count Rochambeau, advanced to the altar and laid the cloak with other offerings of patriotism and generosity. It was used, we are told, to trim the uniforms of the Continental officers and soldiers. Woman’s Cloak. From Hogarth. Woman’s Cloak. From Hogarth. One of the first entries in regard to dress made by Philip Fithian in 1773, when he went to Virginia as a school-teacher, was that “almost every Lady wears a Red Cloak; and when they ride out they tye a Red Handkerchief over their Head &; Face; so when I first came to Virginia, I was distrest whenever I saw a Lady, for I thought she had the Tooth-Ach!” When the young tutor left his charge a year later, he wrote a long letter of introduction, instruction, and advice to his successor; and so much impression had this riding-dress still upon him that he recounted at length the “Masked Ladies,” as he calls them, explaining that the whole neck and face was covered, save a narrow slit for the eyes, as if they had “the Mumps or Tooth-Ach.” It is possible that the insect torments encountered by the fair riders may have been the reason for this cloaking and masking. Not only mosquitoes and flies and fleas were abundant, but Fithian tells of the irritating illness and high fever of the fairest of his little flock from being bitten with ticks, “which cover her like a distinct smallpox.” In seventeenth-century inventories an occasional item is a rocket. I think no better description of a rocket can be given than that of Celia Fiennes:— “You meete all sorts of countrywomen wrapped up in the mantles called West Country Rockets, a large mantle doubled together, of a sort of serge, some are linsey-woolsey and a deep fringe or fag at the lower end; these hang down, some to their feet, some only just below the waist; in the summer they are all in white garments of this sort, in the winter they are in red ones.” This would seem much like a blanket shawl, but the word was also applied to the scarlet round cloak.