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Princes and the higher class of peers washed in silver basins in their own rooms; but a squire or a knight's daughter would have been thought unwarrantably fastidious who was not fully satisfied with a tub and a towel. A comb was the only instrument used for dressing the hair, except where crisping-pins were required; and mirrors were always fixtures against the wall.

All their mysterious rattletraps and whirligigs, their curls and networks and crimples and rimples and crisping-pins, their little absurdities, if you will, have to me a sort of charm, like the tricks and stammerings of a curly-headed child.

"And the crisping-pins?" laughed the critic. "Hasn't Madame Planchet just shown us those?" All this while Mary had not taken her eyes off Carpenter. "So you are really one of those religious fellows!" she exclaimed. "You'll know exactly what to do without any directing! How perfectly incredible!" And at that appropriate moment T-S pushed open the door and waddled in!

But the Lord's hand will be against their tires and crisping-pins, their mufflers and farthingales, as it was against the Jews of old. Ah, dear me!"

In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, and cauls, and round tires like the moon; The chains and the bracelets, and the mufflers; The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings; The rings, and nose jewels; The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins;

They are accursed in the sight of the Lord, as were those women we read about in the Old Testament, with their mantles and crisping-pins. Their low voices and their silk sweeps and their shrinkin' from touchin' shoulders with their fellow-beings in a crowd don't alter matters a mite."

When then we hear of the "tinkling ornaments" of the Jewish women in Isaiah's time, "their combs, and round tires like the moon," their "chains and bracelets and mufflers," their "bonnets, and ornaments of the legs, and head-bands, and tablets and ear-rings," their "rings and nose-jewels," their "changeable suits of apparel, and mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins," their "glasses, and fine linen, and hoods, and veils," their "sweet smells, and girdles, and well-set hair, and stomachers," we may be sure that in Assyria too these various refinements, or others similar to them, were in use, and consequently that the art of the toilet was tolerably well advanced under the second great Asiatic Empire.