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And peering forward through the folds of the curtains, she beheld, amidst a slowly-advancing crowd, a meanly clad, simple looking country youth wearing a ragged broad-brim, and mounted on an unsightly, donkey-like beast, whose long tail and mane were stuck full of briers, and whose hair, lying in every direction, seemed besmeared with mange and dirt; all combining to give both horse and rider a most ungainly and poverty-struck appearance.
Hats and bonnets of all sorts and sizes were made of straw or palmetto, and trimmed with the same. Some used emblems denoting the State or city of the wearer, others a small Confederate battle-flag. Young faces framed in these pretty hats, or looking out from under a broad-brim, appeared doubly bewitching.
The Quaker Society, is the only answer we can find; the Society whose rules and customs at that time tended to repress individuality in its members, and independence of thought or action; which forbade its young men and maidens to look admiringly on any fair face or manly form not framed in a long-eared cap, or surmounted by the regulation broad-brim; which did not accord to a member the right even to publish a newspaper article, without having first submitted it to a committee of its Solons.
With us, the first coup d'oeil is everything; the nuns, the shepherdesses, the Turks, sailors, eastern princes, watchmen, moonshees, milestones, devils, and Quakers are all very well in their way as they pass in the review before us, but when we come to mix in the crowd, we discover that, except the turban and the cowl, the crook and the broad-brim, no further disguise is attempted or thought of.
A tall, straight figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress'd in drab cloth, clean-shaved face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clear black eyes, long or middling-long white hair; he was at this time between 80 and 81 years of age, his head still wearing the broad-brim. A moment looking around the audience with those piercing eyes, amid the perfect stillness.
We had to deal with our old friends the English very much as the peace-loving Quaker did with the pirate who boarded his ship; taking him by the collar Broad-brim dropped him over the ship's side into the water, saying, "Friend, thee has no business on this ship."
"'So fire a few shots through my clothes, here and there, To make it appear 't was a desp'rate affair. So Jim he popped first through the skirt of his coat, And then through his collar quite close to his throat. 'Now once through my broad-brim, quoth Ephraim, 'I vote. Heigho! yea thee and nay thee.
"The ladies desire to see our cattle," said Boyd, "The herd-guard is doubled, our pickets trebled, and the rounds pass every half hour. So it is safe enough, I think." "Yet, scarce the country for a picnic," I said, looking uneasily at Lois. "Oh, Broad-brim, Broad-brim!" quoth she. "Is there any spice in life to compare to a little dash o' danger?"
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