ing the bride's house an extra salute was fired, and the
bridegroom with his party entered a room set aside for them. It was a
matter of strict etiquette that none of the bride's friends should enter
this room until the bride, led by the best man, advanced and stationed
herself with her bridesmaid before the minister, while the best man
stood behind the groom. When the time arrived for the marrying pair to
join hands, each put the right hand behind the back, and the bridesmaid
and the best man pulled off the wedding-gloves, taking care to finish
their duty at precisely the same moment. At the end of the ceremony
everyone kissed the bride, and more noisy firing of guns and drinking of
New England rum ended the day.

In some communities still rougher horse-play than unexpected volleys of
musketry was shown to the bridal party or to wedding guests. Great trees
were felled across the bridle-paths, or grapevines were stretched across
to hinder the free passage, and thus delay the bridal festivities.

Occasionally the wedding-bells did not ring smoothly. One Scotch-Irish
lassie seized the convenient opportunity, when the rollicking company of
her male friends had set out to meet the bridegroom, to mount a-pillion
behind a young New Hampshire Lochinvar, and ride boldly off to a
neighboring parson and marry the man of her choice. Such an unpublished
marriage was known in New Hampshire as a "Flagg marriage," from one
Parson Flagg, of some notoriety, of Chester, Vermont, whose house was a
sort of Yankee Gretna Green; and such a marriage was made possible by
the action of the government of New Hampshire in issuing marriage
licenses at the price of two guineas each, as a means of increasing its
income. Sometimes easy-going parsons kept a stock of these licenses on
hand, ready for issue to eloping couples at a slightly advanced price.
Such a marriage, without proper "publishing" in meeting, was not,
however, deemed very reputable.

Madam Knight, travelling through Connecticut in 1704, wrote thus in her
diary of Connecticut youth:

"They generally marry very young; the males oftener as I am told
under twenty years than above; they generally make public weddings
and have a way something singular in some of them; viz. just before
joining hands the bridegroom quits the place, who is soon followed
by the Bridesmen and, as it were, dragged back to duty, being the
reverse to the former practice among us to