In the eleventh chapter of Corinthians wise Paul delivered some sentences of exhortation, of reproof, of warning to Corinthian women which I presume he understood and perhaps Corinthian dames did, but which have been a dire puzzle since to parsons and male members of their congregations. (I cannot think that women ever bothered much about his words.) For instance, Archbishop Latimer, in one of the cheerful, slangy rallies to his hearers which he called sermons, quotes Paul’s sentence that a woman ought to have a power on her head, and construes positively that a power is a French hood. This is certainly a somewhat surprising notion, but I presume he knew. However, Roger Williams deemed a power a veil; and being somewhat dictatorial in his words, albeit the tenderest of creatures in his heart, he bade Salem women come to meeting in a veil, telling them they should come like Sarah of old, wearing this veil as a token of submission to their husbands. The text saith this exactly, “A woman ought to have power on her head because of the angels,” which seems to me one of those convenient sayings of Paul and others which can be twisted to many, to any meanings, even to Latimer’s French hood. Old John Cotton, of course, found ample Scripture to prove Salem women should not wear veils, and so here in this New World, as in the Holland sojourn, the head-covering of the mothers rent in twain the meetings of the fathers, while the women wore veils or no veils, French hoods or beaver hats, in despite of Paul’s opinions and their husbands’ constructions of his opinions. An excellent description of the Puritan women of a dissenting congregation is in _Hudibras Redivivus;_ it reads:— “The good old dames among the rest Were all most primitively drest In stiffen-bodyed russet gowns And on their heads old steeple crowns With pristine pinners next their faces Edged round with ancient scallop-laces, Such as, my antiquary says, Were worn in old Queen Bess’s days, In ruffs; and fifty other ways Their wrinkled necks were covered o’er With whisks of lawn by granmarms wore.” The “old steeple crowns” over “pristine pinners” were not peculiar to the Puritans. There was a time, in the first years of the seventeenth century, when many Englishwomen wore steeple-crowned hats with costly hatbands. We find them in pictures of women of the court, as well as upon the heads of Puritans. I have a dozen prints and portraits of Englishwomen in rich dress with these hats. The Quaker Tub-preacher, shown here, wears one. Perhaps the best known example to Americans may be seen in the portrait of Pocahontas here.