United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Women -- United States -- History; Women -- United States -- Social conditions
"To Be Sold at Public Vendue,
The Whole Estate of
Isabella Sprightly, Toast and Coquette,
(Now retiring from Business)
"Imprimis, all the tools and utensils necessary for carrying on
the trade, viz.: several bundles of darts and arrows well pointed
and capable of doing great execution. A considerable quantity of
patches, paint, brushes and cosmetics for plastering, painting,
and white-washing the face; a complete set of caps, "a la mode a
Paris," of all sizes, from five to fifteen inches in height; with
several dozens of cupids, very proper to be stationed on a ruby
lip, a diamond eye, or a roseate cheek.
"Item, as she proposes by certain ceremonies to transform one of
her humble servants into a husband and keep him for her own use,
she offers for sale, Florio, Daphnis, Cynthio, and Cleanthes,
with several others whom she won by a constant attendance on
business during the space of four years. She can prove her
indisputable right thus to dispose of them by certain deeds of
gifts, bills of sale, and attestation, vulgarly called love
letters, under their own hands and seals. They will be offered
very cheap, for they are all of them broken-hearted, consumptive,
or in a dying condition. Nay, some of them have been dead this
half year, as they declare and testify in the above mentioned
writing.
"N.B. Their hearts will be sold separately."
When all the above implements and wiles failed to entrap a lover, and
the coquette was left as a "wall-flower," as the Germans express it, the
men of the day satirized the unfortunate one just as mercilessly. Read,
for example, a few lines from the _Progress of Dullness_, thought to be
a very humorous poem in its time:
"Poor Harriett now hath had her day;
No more the beaux confess her sway;
New beauties push her from the stage;
She trembles at the approach of age,
And starts to view the altered face
That wrinkles at her in her glass.
* * * * *
"Despised by all and doomed to meet
Her lovers at her rivals' feet,
She flies assemblies, shuns the ball,
And cries out vanity, on all;
* * * * *
"Now careless grown of airs polite
Her noon-day night-cap meets the sight;
Her hair uncombed collects together
With ornaments of many a feather.
* * * * *
"She spends her breath as years prevail
At this sad wicked world to rail,
To slander all her sex impromptu,
And wonder what the times will come to."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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