_= (Manual, p. 490.)
From "The History of the Province of New York."
=_9._=. MANNERS OF THE INHABITANTS.
New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men
collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies, in winter, are
frequently entertained either at concerts of music or assemblies, and
make a very good appearance. They are comely, and dress well, and scarce
any of them have distorted shapes. Tinctured with a Dutch education,
they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and
singular neatness. The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the
fashionable part of the fair sex in some places, is a vice with which
my countrywomen cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they
so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the
improvement of the mind; in which, I confess, we have set them the
example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable; naturally
sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more
elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable
in the sex. Our schools are in the lowest order: the instructors want
instruction; and, through a long, shameful neglect of all the arts and
sciences, our common speech is extremely corrupt, and the evidences of
a bad taste, both as to thought and language, are visible in all our
proceedings, public and private.
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