We find George Washington ordering for his little stepdaughter (a well-dressed child if ever there was one), when she was six years old, “A fashionable cap or fillet with bib apron.” And a few years later he orders, “Tuckers, Bibs, and Aprons if Fashionable.” Boys wore aprons as long as they wore coats; aprons with stomachers or bibs of drawn-work and lace, or of stiffly starched lawn; aprons just like those of their sisters. It was hard to bear. Hoop-coat, masks, packthread stays—these seem strange dress for growing girls. George Washington sent abroad for masks for his wife and his little stepdaughter, “Miss Custis,” when the little girl was six years old; and “children’s masks” are often named in bills of sale. Loo-masks were small half-masks, and were also imported in all sizes. The face of Mrs. Madison, familiarly known as “Dolly Madison,” wife of President James Madison, long retained the beauty of youth. Much of this was surely due to a faithful mother, who, when little Dolly Payne was sent to school, sewed a sun-bonnet on the child’s head every morning, placed on her arms and hands long gloves, and made her wear a mask to keep every ray of sunlight from her face. When masks were so universally worn by women, it is not strange, after all, that children wore them. Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child. Rev. J.P. Dabney when a Child. I read with horror an advertisement of John McQueen, a New York stay-maker in 1767, that he has children’s packthread stays, children’s bone stays, and “neat polished steel collars for young Misses so much worn at the boarding schools in London.” Poor little “young Misses”! There were also “turned stays, jumps, gazzets, costrells and caushets” (which were perhaps corsets) to make children appear straight. Costrells and gazzets we know not to-day. Jumps were feeble stays. “Now a shape in neat stays Now a slattern in jumps.” Robert Gibbes. Robert Gibbes.