Other advertisements read:
[1761] "Morrison, peruke maker from London, dresses ladies and gentlemen's hair in the politest taste. He has a choice parcel of human, horse, and goat's hairs to dispose of."
[1768] "James Daniel, wig-maker and hairdresser also operates on the teeth, a business so necessary in this city."
Wigs were an important feature in the costume of the men. They were subject to tax and were a good source of revenue. The Treasurer of the Colony of New York, as early as 1732, reported that he had received from the tax on wigs the sum of £9 17s. 6d. This tax was called—
—"a wise and prudent measure, because it was the fashion for even young boys to conceal their own hair under large and spacious wigs. To repress a custom so absurd, or to make a source of revenue has been the object of the legislature."
So we paid, and gladly, for our wigs, even though visiting Englishmen spoke of us thus: "The people, both in town and country, are sober, industrious, and hospitable, though intent upon gain."
All travellers mention our hospitality. Prince de Broglie writes in 1782:
"M. de la Luzerne took me to tea at Mrs. Morris, wife of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Her house is small, but well ordered and neat, the doors and tables of superb well-polished mahogany, the locks and andirons of polished brass, the cups arranged symetrically, the mistress of the house good-looking and very grey."
Mrs. Morris was considered to have one of the handsomest houses in Philadelphia, and it was not at all the mode to display one's own hair if it had turned grey, so the fact of Mrs. Morris doing so seems to have impressed the volatile Frenchman.
Another traveller, Captain Laurence Butler, writes from Westmoreland, Virginia, in 1784, to Mrs. Craddock, an Englishwoman, as follows:
"When balls are given, which is very frequent, the company stay all night (not as in your country), for every gentleman has ten or fifteen beds, which is sufficient for the ladies, and the men shift for themselves."