The dress of these ladies "consisted of a jacket of cloth or silk and a number of short petticoats of every stuff and color, quilted in fanciful figures. If the pride of the Dutch matrons lay in their beds and linen, that of the Dutch maidens lay equally in their elaborately wrought petticoats, which were their own handiwork and often constituted their only dowry. They wore blue, red, and green worsted stockings of their own knitting, with parti-colored clocks, together with high-heeled leather shoes. Considerable jewelry was in use among them in the shape of rings and brooches, and girdle-chains of gold and silver were much affected by fashionable belles. These were attached to the richly bound Bibles and hymn-books and suspended from the belt outside the dress, thus forming an ostentatious Sunday decoration. For necklaces they wore numerous strings of gold beads; and the poorer classes, in humble imitation, encircled their throats with steel and glass beads and strings of Job's tears, the fruit of a plant thought to possess some medicinal virtues." This was their holiday costume. Their dress for work and wear was "of good substantial homespun. Every household had from two to six spinning-wheels for wool and flax, whereon the women of the family expended every leisure moment. Looms, too, were in common use, and piles of homespun cloth and snow-white linen attested to the industry of the active Dutch maidens. Hoards of home-made stuffs were thus accumulated in the settlement, sufficient to last till a distant generation." Stolid as we think these old Dutch people, they had their amusements, in which their women participated with much zest. There were "bees" of all kinds,--quilting-bees, husking-bees, apple-bees, and raising-bees; but above all they loved dancing; and, though we may think of them as heavy-footed, it is probable that many of these demure Dutch maidens would "trip it on the light fantastic toe" with as good a grace as their less sedate sisters of the South.