The very children, urchins of five and six years old, had their
Lilliputian John Canoes and Devices. But the beautiful part of the
exhibition was the Set Girls. They danced along the streets, in bands
of from fifteen to thirty. There were brown sets, and black sets, and
sets of all the intermediate gradations of colour. Each set was dressed
pin for pin alike, and carried umbrellas or parasols of the same colour
and size, held over their nice showy, well put on toques, or Madras
handkerchiefs, all of the same pattern, tied round their heads, fresh
out of the fold.--They sang, as they swam along the streets, in the most
luxurious attitudes. I had never seen more beautiful creatures than
there were amongst the brown sets--clear olive complexions, and fine
faces, elegant carriages, splendid figures,--full, plump, and magnificent.
Most of the Sets were as much of a size as Lord----'s eighteen
daughters, sailing down Regent Street, like a Charity School of a
Sunday, led by a rum--looking old beadle--others again had large Roman
matron--looking women in the leading files, the figurantes in their
tails becoming slighter and smaller, as they tapered away, until they
ended in leetle picaniny, no bigger as my tumb, but always preserving
the uniformity of dress, and colour of the umbrella or parasol.
Sometimes the breeze, on opening a corner, would strike the stern most
of a set composed in this manner of small fry, and stagger the little
things, getting beneath their tiny umbrellas, and fairly blowing them
out of the line, and ruffling their ribbons and finery, as if they had
been tulips bending and shaking their leaves before it.
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