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While contemplating the white draperies of our windows, and the snowy robings of the bed, we could not but call to mind the fact, of which we were before aware, that not an article was the result of the unpaid oil of the slave; neither did this restriction, voluntarily assumed, fetter at all the bountifulness of the table, where free-grown sugar, coffee, rice, and spices seemed to derive a double value to our friends from this consideration.
The young man was aware of the fascination of the small figure in her crimson robings, sitting so demurely in the firelight, the gauzy scarf dropped away from her white neck and shoulders, the lovely curve of her baby cheek and tempting neck showing against the background of the shadows behind her.
"One of your countrymen writes me from your metropolis," taking a letter from his pocket; "I shall read you a line or two: 'Our city will soon be bright with the beauty of fair women, handsome men, superb robings, gay equipages, prancing steeds. Rumour hath it that one of our favourite belles is sunning herself in your land.
So, as I was saying, unknown to any body, I bought of farmer Nichols's wife and daughters a good sad-coloured stuff, of their own spinning, enough to make me a gown and two petticoats; and I made robings and facings of a pretty bit of printed calico I had by me.
'The Duchess's dress was of white satin embroidered, the bottom of the petticoat brown hills covered with all sorts of weeds, and every breadth had an old stump of a tree, that ran up almost to the top of the petticoat, broken and ragged, and worked with brown chenille, round which twined nasturtiums, ivy, honeysuckles, periwinkles, and all sorts of running flowers, which spread and covered the petticoat.... The robings and facings were little green banks covered with all sorts of weeds, and the sleeves and the rest of the gown loose twining branches of the same sort as those on the petticoat.
"When he was just old enough to run about without help, he used to wear his trousers inlaid with the finest lace, with golden studs and laced robings; he had a plume of feathers in his cap, which was of velvet, with a button of gold to fasten it up in front under the feathers, so that whoever saw him with the servants who attended him, used to say, 'Whose child is that?
Near to this miscellaneous assemblage rose another heap, the base of which appeared to consist of some half score of elephants' teeth, rough hemp, fragments of huge cable, cable-yarn, and all manner of cordage; rolls of lewxerns', martrons', and leopard-skins; wolf-skins, "tawed and untawed;" girdles of silk, velvet, and leather; and on pegs, immediately over, hung half a dozen mantles of miniver, and some wide robings of the pure spotted ermine.
Letters in turn gave place to mere notes and postcards, scribbled in violent haste, at wide intervals. And ultimately even these ceased; and the great silence of separation was unbroken. Nor were the promises redeemed: there came to Laura neither gifts of books nor calls to be present at academic robings.
A "sincere" man, then, as Carlyle would say, at bottom; but overlaid with such "Jewish old clothes," such professional robings and personal plumage as makes it difficult, save in the revealing "Diary," to see the man himself. The "Magnalia Christi Americana," treating the history of New England from 1620 to 1698, was published in a tall London folio of nearly 800 pages in 1702.
Another thing kept coming into Leslie's head that day, the yards of delicate grass-linen that she had hemstitched, and knotted into bands that summer, just for idle work, when plain bindings and simple ruffling would have done as well, and all for her accumulating treasure of reserved robings, while here were these two girls darning stockings, and sewing over heavy woollen stuffs, that actual, inevitable work might be dispatched in these bright, warm hours that had been meant for holiday.
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