This virago-sleeve was worn by women of all ages and by children, both boys and girls. A virago-sleeve is worn by Rebecca Rawson (here), and by Mrs. Simeon Stoddard (here), by Madam Padishal and by her little girl, and by the Gibbes child shown later in the book. A carved figure of Anne Stotevill (1631) is in Westminster Abbey. Her dress is a rich gown slightly open in front at the foot. It has ornamental hooks, or frogs, with a button at each end—these are in groups of three, from chin to toe. Four groups of three frogs each, on both sides, make twenty-four, thus giving forty-eight buttons. A stiff ruff is at the neck, and similar smaller ones at the wrist. She wears a French hood with a loose scarf over it. She has a very graceful virago-sleeve with handsome knots of ribbon. It is certain that men’s sleeves and women’s sleeves kept ever close company. Neither followed the other; they walked abreast. If a woman’s sleeves were broad and scalloped, so was the man’s. If the man had a tight and narrow sleeve, so did his wife. When women had virago-sleeves, so did men. Even in the nineteenth century, at the first coming of leg-of-mutton sleeves in 1830 _et seq_., dandies’ sleeves were gathered full at the armhole. In the second reign of these vast sleeves a few years ago, man had emancipated himself from the reign of woman’s fashions, and his sleeves remained severely plain. Small invoices of fashionable clothing were constantly being sent across seas. There were sent to and from England and other countries “ventures,” which were either small lots of goods sent on speculation to be sold in the New World, or a small sum given by a private individual as a “venture,” with instructions to purchase abroad anything of interest or value that was salable. To take charge of these petty commercial transactions, there existed an officer, now obsolete, known as a supercargo. It is told that one Providence ship went out with the ventures of one hundred and fifty neighbors on board—that is, one hundred and fifty persons had some money or property at stake on the trip. Three hundred ventures were placed with another supercargo. Sometimes women sent sage from their gardens, or ginseng if they could get it. A bunch of sage paid in China for a porcelain tea-set. Along the coast, women ventured food-supplies,—cheese, eggs, butter, dried apples, pickles, even hard gingerbread; another sent a barrel of cider vinegar. Clothes in small lots were constantly being bought and sold on a venture. From London, in November, 1667, Walter Banesely sent as a venture to William Pitkin in Hartford these articles of clothing with their prices:—