he hurried courtship must be carried on, all
led to the recognition and endurance of the custom; and in its open
recognition lay its redeeming feature. There was no secrecy, no thought
of concealment; the bundling was done under the supervision of mother
and sisters.

As a contrast to all this laxity of behaviour, let me state that in the
very locality where it obtained--the Connecticut Valley--other
sweethearts are said to have been forced to a most ceremonious
courtship, to whisper their tender nothings through a "courting-stick,"
a hollow stick about an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long,
fitted with mouth- and ear-pieces. In the presence of the entire family,
lovers, seated formally on either side of the great fireplace, carried
on this chilly telephonic love-making. One of these batons of propriety
still is preserved in Longmeadow, Mass.

Of this primitive colony with primitive manners some very extraordinary
cases of bucolic love at first sight are recorded--love that did not
follow the law of pounds, shillings, and pence. At an ordination in
Hopkinton, New Hampshire, a country bumpkin forgot the place, the
preacher, and the preaching, in the ravishing sight of an unknown damsel
whom he saw for the first time within the meeting-house. He sat
entranced through the long sermon, the tedious psalm-singings, the
endless prayers, until at last the services were over. In an ecstasy of
uncouth and unreasoning passion he rushed out of church, forced his way
through the departing congregation, seized the unknown fair one in his
arms crying out, "Now I have got ye, you jade, I have! I have!" And from
so startling and unalluring a beginning, a marriage followed. In a
neighboring community a dignified officer of the law went to "warn out
of town" a strange "transient woman" who might become a pauper, and
would then have to be kept at the town's expense, were this ceremony
omitted. Terrified at the majesty of the law and its grand though
incomprehensible wording, the young warned one burst into tears, which
so worked upon the tender-hearted officer that he (being conveniently a
widower) proposed to her offhand, was called in meeting, married her,
and thus took her under his own and the town's protection. More than one
case of "marriage at first sight" is recounted, of bold Puritan wooers
riding up to the door of a fair one whom they had never seen, telling
their story of a lonely home, forlorn housekeeping, and desire