The portrait of another Boston woman of distinction, Mrs. Simeon Stoddard, is given here. I will attempt to explain who Mrs. Simeon Stoddard was. She was Mr. Stoddard’s third widow and the third widow also of Peter Sergeant, builder of the Province House. Mr. Sergeant’s second wife had been married twice before she married him, and Simeon Stoddard’s father had four wives, all having been widows when he married them. Lastly, our Mrs. Simeon Stoddard, triumphing over death and this gallimaufry of Boston widows, took a fourth husband, the richest merchant in town, Samuel Shrimpton. Having had in all four husbands of wealth, and with them and their accumulation of widows there must have been as a widow’s mite an immense increment and inheritance of clothing (for clothing we know was a valued bequest), it is natural that we find her very richly dressed and with a distinctly haughty look upon her handsome face as becomes a conqueror both of men and widows. The straight, lace collar, such as is worn by Madam Padishal and shown in all portraits of this date, is, I believe, a whisk. The whisk was a very interesting and to us a puzzling article of attire, through the lack of precise description. It was at first called the falling-whisk, and is believed to have been simply the handsome, lace-edged, stiff, standing collar turned down over the shoulders. This collar had been both worn with the ruff and worn after it, and had been called a fall. Quicherat tells that the “whisk” came into universal use in 1644, when very low-necked gowns were worn, and that it was simply a kerchief or fichu to cover the neck. We have a few side-lights to help us, as to the shape of the whisk, in the form of advertisements of lost whisks. In one case (1662) it is “a cambric whisk with Flanders lace, about a quarter of a yard broad, and a lace turning up about an inch broad, with a stock in the neck and a strap hanging down before.” And in 1664 “A Tiffany Whisk with a great Lace down and a little one up, of large Flowers, and open work; with a Roul for the Head and Peak.” The roll and peak were part of a cap. Mrs. Simeon Stoddard. Mrs. Simeon Stoddard. These portraits show whisks in slightly varying forms. We have the “broad Lace lying down” in the handsome band at the shoulder; the “little lace standing up” was a narrow lace edging the whisk at the throat or just above the broad lace. Sometimes the whisk was wholly of mull or lawn. The whisk was at first wholly a part of woman’s attire, then for a time it was worn, in modified form, by men. Madam Pepys had a white whisk in 1660 and then a “noble lace whisk.” The same year she bought hers in London, Governor Berkeley paid half a pound for a tiffany whisk in Virginia. Many American women, probably all well-dressed women, had them. They are also seen on French portraits of the day. One of Madam de Maintenon shows precisely the same whisk as this of Madam Padishal’s, tied in front with tiny knots of ribbon.