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Updated: June 14, 2025
Others represented females; these had lofty head-dresses, which sometimes rose into two peaks or horns, recalling the costume of English ladies in the time of Henry IV. These figures were veiled and carefully draped about the upper part of the person, but showed the face, and had the legs bare from the knee downwards.
The bodices cut extremely low both back and front; the fantastical head-dresses, designed to attract notice; here a cap from the Pays de Caux, and there a Spanish mantilla; the hair crimped and curled like a poodle's, or smoothed down in bandeaux over the forehead; the close-fitting white stockings and limbs, revealed it would not be easy to say how, but always at the right moment all this poetry of vice has fled.
Odd carved boxes, too, made of an unknown wood and inlaid with shells, were here in plenty; cases of buckskin, containing the conjuring-sticks or gambling-kits of the Thlinkit medicine-men; loin-cloths, ornamented with multitudes of rattling puffin-beaks; head-dresses of defunct warriors; fantastic and horrible masks; huge spoons carved out of the horns of the mountain-ibex; bead-work on leather; robes of many-colored skins quilted together; images carved to resemble otters; fleecy robes of wild sheep and goat; pipes cut with nude figures; antlers; stuffed animals; white-breasted loons, and the like.
Two or three individuals, distinguished by head-dresses of beautiful tappa, and wearing a great number of ornaments, appeared to officiate as masters of the ceremonies. By noon the entertainment had fairly begun and we were told that it would last during the whole of the two following days.
A few stage swords and spears and two or three suits of armor of suspicious likeness to block-tin, occupied one of the back corners; while suspended from pegs and arranged upon shelves were false beards, wigs and eyebrows, preposterous noses, Indian head-dresses of feathers, hats of Italian bandits wreathed with greasy ribbons, and crowns and coronets of all apparent values, from that flashing with light which Isabella might have worn when all the gold and gems of Columbus' new world lay at her disposal, to the thin band of gold with one gem in the centre of the front, which some virgin princess might modestly have blushed under on her wedding day.
A low cap, of starched lawn, which reminded one of the grave head-dresses of Dutch matrons, encircled a pale and austere countenance, formerly of a rare and haughty beauty, and impressed with the Scriptural character. Some lines in the forehead, caused by the almost continual knitting of her gray brows, showed that this woman had often suffered from the pressure of intense grief.
I like better the smaller picture with the same title No. 88 in which the Saints at each side are wholly beautiful in Botticelli's wistful way, and the painting of their heads and head-dresses is so perfect as to fill one with a kind of despair. But taken altogether one must consider Botticelli's triumph in the Accademia to be pagan rather than sacred.
He also collected even more beautiful but less exensive decorations for Christmas-trees, at a wholesale house on Park Row. These he hoped to exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or for whatever other curious and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki boasted. He already pictured his rooms on his return hung fantastically with crossed spears and boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
Step by step, they lead their melancholy patrons along the meandering margin of their flowing pages from the very borders of the tomb, through all the intermediate changes by which sorrow publishes to the world its gradual subsidence, and land them at last in the sixteenth page, restored to themselves and to society, in the frontbox of the Opera, glittering in 'splendid head-dresses in pearl, in 'fashionably elegant turbans, and in 'dress-caps trimmed with blonde and Brussels lace. For such benefactors to womankind the dears of course no reward can be too great; and, therefore, Messrs Moan and Groan, strong in their modest sense of merit, make no parade of prices.
Now, on this morning the captain of the guard and his orderlies advanced to the waggon and stood in front of it. They were splendid men, armed with great spears and shields, and adorned with feather head-dresses and all the wild finery of their regiment. Owen descended from the waggon and came to meet them, and so for a few moments they remained, face to face, in silence.
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