Philadelphia.
_Scottish Female Dress._--When did ladies cease to use hair-powder,
face-patches, hoops, and high-heeled shoes? An old lady of about seventy
recollects perfectly that her mother wore then all (so, she thinks, did her
visitors, who came to a dish of tea) except the hoop, which was reserved
for grand occasions. On the introduction of the new-fangled low-heeled
shoes, she recollects her mother tottering about on them like a novice on
skates, and groaning with pains in her legs, a victim to a change of
fashion! At this time, she adds, was in every-day use the _milk tally_ and
_bread-nick-stick_. The first, that represented in Hogarth's picture; the
second, a stick about a foot long, four-sided, on which each loaf was
registered by a notch or nick in the stick; the servant kept a similar
_nick-stick_ as a check on the baker; but during the flirtation, common
_then_ as _now_ on such occasions, the old lady slyly remarks, the baker
often gallantly nicked the check-stick, as well as his own, with a couple
of notches for one. Hence, possibly, the decline and fall of the use of
this wooden system of book-keeping by double notch. Is any date assigned to
the ceasing of the practice of using the wooden tally and nick-stick?