They were a light-hearted band of maidens in these pre-Revolutionary days in the "Old Dominion!" They had no dreams sadder than mystic dreams on bride's cake, no duties except those imposed by affection, no tasks too difficult, no burdens too heavy. They sang the old-time songs, and danced the old-time dances, and played the old-time English games around the Christmas fires, burning nuts, and naming apple seeds, and loving their loves "with an A or a B," even although my Lady Castlemaine, of whom no one could approve, had so entertained her very doubtful friends a hundred years before. They had the Pyrrhic dances, but they had the Pyrrhic phalanx as well! The "nobler and manlier lessons" were not forgotten in all the light-hearted manners of the age.
CHAPTER XI
THE TOAST OF THE GALLANTS OF HER DAY
Of the "Mistress Mary Ball's" personal appearance we know nothing, unless we can guide our imaginations by the recollections of old Fredericksburg neighbors who knew her after she had passed middle age. Washington Irving says she was a beauty and a belle. He had only one source of information, George Washington Parke Custis, the sole eye-witness who wrote of her personal appearance in middle life. Sparks, Lossing, and all the rest who have described her, had no other. Parson Weems, of course, had something to say; but we do not know that he ever saw her. Any pen-portrait made of her to-day can boast only an outline of truth. Probability and imagination must fill in the picture. It is certain that she was "finely formed, her features pleasing, yet strongly marked." That is all! Has not some one said "her eyes were blue"? Well, then, fair hair and fair complexion would match the blue eyes. She was purely English. Her mother was probably born in England, her grandmother and grandfather were certainly born and reared there. Her type was that of an athletic, healthy Englishwoman, to whom an upright carriage and much out-of-door life gave a certain style. I, for one, am assured that she was handsome and distingué,—a superb woman in every particular. She possessed a pure, high spirit, and
"Every spirit as it is most pure
And hath in it the more of heavenly light—
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in."
OLD YEOCOMICO CHURCH.