The Boarding School; Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils / Consisting of Information, Instruction and Advice, Calculated to Improve the Manners and Form the Character of Young Ladies. To Which Is Added, a Collection of Letters, Written by the Pupils to Their Instructress, Their Friends, and Each Other.

by Hannah Webster Foster

May wisdom guide my dubious way.

To Miss MATILDA FIELDING.

Harmony-grove.

DEAR MATILDA,

I was last week at Boston; and having occasion for a new hat, stepped into a milliner’s shop to inquire the mode. The milliner replied that it was not yet in her power to answer my question. “The spring ships,” said she, “are later than common; but their arrival is hourly expected, when we shall be furnished with memorandum books which will ascertain and determine the fashion for the season.” What she meant by memorandum books, I could not conceive. I had always supposed them blanks, designed for noting whatever occurred without inconvenience. Unwilling, however, to be thought a simple country girl, totally unacquainted with the world, I sought no explanation from her; but repaired to a particular friend for instruction; from whom I learned that the chief value of these same memorandum books consists in their containing imported cuts of ladies’ headdresses, hats and other habiliments, which are always sure to be admired and imitated, as the perfection of taste and propriety.

This discovery mortified me exceedingly. It justified, beyond any thing which I had ever suspected to exist as a fact, what I once heard a European assert, “that Americans had neither character nor opinion of their own.”

With due deference to those better judges, who despise the simplicity of our ancestors, and labor to introduce the corrupt manners and customs of the old world into our country, I cannot but think it extremely ridiculous for an independent nation, which discards all foreign influence, glories in its freedom, and boasts of its genius and taste, servilely to ape exotic fashions, even in articles of dress and fanciful ornaments.

Have not the daughters of Columbia sufficient powers of invention to decorate themselves? Must we depend upon the winds and waves for the form, as well as the materials of our garb? Why may we not follow our own inclination; and not be deemed finical or prudish in our appearance, merely because our habit is not exactly correspondent with the pretty pictures in the memorandum books, last imported.

It is sincerely to be regretted that this subject is viewed in so important a light. It occupies too much of the time, and engrosses too much of the conversation of our sex. For one, I have serious thoughts of declaring independence.

ANNA WILLIAMS.