"Our Damsel knowing this, her conversation is generally amongst the women (as there is least danger from that sex) so that I found it no easy matter to enjoy her company, for most of her time (save what was taken up in needle work and learning French &c.) was spent in Religious Worship. She knew Time was a dressing-room for Eternity, and therefore reserves most of her hours for better uses than those of the Comb, the Toilet, and the Glass.
"And as I am sure this is most agreeable to the Virgin Modesty which should make Marriage an act of their obedience rather than their choice. And they that think their Friends too slow-paced in the matter give certain proof that lust is their sole motive. But as the Damsel I have been describing would neither anticipate nor contradict the will of her parents, so do I assure you she is against Forcing her own by marrying where she cannot love; and that is the reason she is still a Virgin."
The ideas of the old critic would hardly commend themselves in their entirety to modern times; yet they hold a germ of truth.
Marriage customs among the early colonists presented some curious contrasts. The practice of "bundling," probably imported from Wales, was long extant in the rural districts; yet in the same district in which this custom was most prevalent there was another practice of the opposite extreme of prudery, whereby those who were passing through the first and even intermediate stages of courtship were forced to "do their spiriting" in the presence of the household, the only license of propinquity granted to them being the privilege of whispering their words through a hollow stick about six feet long, known as a "courting-stick." The use of this as a conductor ensured secrecy to the speech of love; but the enforced separation must have been terribly disheartening at times, and there must have been occasions when the lover longed to lay the stick upon the backs of the company and put them to flight. It must have been as difficult to be impassioned through this medium as nowadays to propose through a telephone.
There was abundant protection for wives in the early laws of the northern colonies. Bigamy was forbidden in a law which forbade a man to "marrie too wifes which were both alive for anything that can appear otherwise at one time," which strikes one as more well-meaning than lucid. The husband must not beat his wife or even abuse her with angry words, while she, on the other hand, if she gave vent to "a curst and shrewish tongue" was in danger of the stocks or the ducking-stool. The husband was not allowed to desert his wife for long or even to keep her in an outlying and dangerous situation, else the town "will pull his house down." Woman may have been regarded as the weaker vessel by the old Puritans, but they were determined that her interests should not be neglected, at least so far as in that age was well and customary.