We have dancing … from soon after sundown until a few minutes after nine o'clock.... Occasionally the boys who play the female partners in the dances exercise their ingenuity in dressing to look as girlish as possible. In the absence of lady duds they use leaves, and the leaf-clad beauties often look very pretty and always odd enough.

Letter to Sophia Birchard Hayes (10 July 1862) - Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)