Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/148

 for their summer wear, they may state the problem thus: As a cloth frock-coat is to a linen blouse, so is a silk gown to the required article of clothing, which must of course be rather of a gossamer texture—thin muslin would, I should think, come pretty near. But, above all things, let them be provided with the newest ribbons and the latest fashions, as it gives the ladies in Australia singular satisfaction to know that they are only six months behind the fashions of London and Paris. A lady would find a good stock of boots and shoes of great service,—not only slight ones, but three or four pair of strong cloth boots.

The voyage is a great bugbear to many people, and it certainly is a disagreeable way of spending three or four months—particularly to ladies, who may happen not to be good sailors; it is also, no doubt, attended with an ordinary risk; but neither man nor woman are worth their salt who will not encounter more than this, while they have in view any object worth pursuing; and, without wishing in the slightest degree to cant, I know not how any person can have the slighest [sic] reliance on the providence of God Almighty, who does not feel that the waves and tempests are as much the instruments of his power, and equally subject to his control, as the events with which he is more familiar, and that an all-seeing eye and over-ruling Providence is about his path and about his bed, although he take the "wings of the morning, and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea." I should not have alluded to this subject, but that I know that some women are weak enough to allow their imagination to dwell on shipwreck, with its