moulting Season
, with regard to that Part of their Dress, having cast great Quantities of Ribbon, Lace, and Cambrick, and in some measure reduced that Part of the human Figure to the beautiful globular Form, which is natural to it. We have for a great while expected what kind of Ornament would be substituted in the Place of those antiquated Commodes. But our Female Projectors were all the last Summer so taken up with the Improvement of their Petticoats, that they had not time to attend to any thing else; but having at length sufficiently adorned their lower Parts, they now begin to turn their Thoughts upon the other Extremity, as well remembring the old Kitchen Proverb, that if you light your Fire at both Ends, the middle will shift for it self.
I am engaged in this Speculation by a Sight which I lately met with at the Opera. As I was standing in the hinder Part of the Box, I took notice of a little Cluster of Women sitting together in the prettiest coloured Hoods that I ever saw.
of them was Blue, another Yellow, and another Philomot
; the fourth was of a Pink Colour, and the fifth of a pale Green. I looked with as much Pleasure upon this little party-coloured Assembly, as upon a Bed of Tulips, and did not know at first whether it might not be an Embassy of
Indian
Queens; but upon my going about into the Pit, and taking them in Front, I was immediately undeceived, and saw so much Beauty in every Face, that I found them all to be
English