hurch to be embroidered, and says:

"Only this hankercher; a young gentlewoman
Wish'd me to acquaint you with her mind herein:
In one corner of the same, place wanton Love,
Drawing his bow, shooting an amorous dart--
Opposit against him an arrow in an heart;
In a third corner picture forth Disdain,
A cruel fate unto a loving vein;
In the fourth, draw a springing laurel-tree,
Circled about with a ring of poesy."

Wedding contracts in the times of the Tudors were peculiar, not being
regarded as binding unless there had been an exchange of gold or the
drinking of wine. In the old play of _The Widow_, Ricardo artfully
entices the widow into a verbal contract, whereupon one of her suitors
draws hope for himself through the possibility of the engagement being
invalid because it lacked the observance of this custom. He says:
"Stay, stay--you broke no Gold between you?" To which she answers: "We
broke nothing, Sir;" and on his adding: "Nor drank to each other?" she
replies: "Not a drop, Sir." Whence he draws this conclusion: "That the
contract cannot stand good in Law." The custom of throwing rice after
a wedded couple is a continuance of the practice in the sixteenth
century of throwing wheat upon the head of the bride as she came from
the church. Marriage was not considered irrevocable, because, aside
from the regular forms of divorce, it was not unusual for a husband
to sell his wife for a satisfactory consideration. Even down to recent
times, the people in some of the rural districts of England could not
understand why a husband had not a right so to dispose of his wife,
provided he delivered her over with a halter around her neck. Henry
Machyn notes in his _Diary_, in 1553, the following: "Dyd ryd in a
cart Checken, parson of Sant Necolas Coldabbay, round abowt London,
_for he sold ys wyff_ to a bowcher." When the contracting parties
were too poor to pay for the ceremony and the wedding feast, and the
expenses of the occasion were met by the guests clubbing together, the
occasion was termed a "penny wedding."

One of the popular customs of the day was to observe Mayday in the
country districts by erecting a brightly decorated Maypole, about
which the young people danced the simple rustic dances. It is not
unusual to find people to-day sighing for a return of the good old
customs of yore, and a favorite lament is the lapse of the observance
of Mayday in the old English manner. There was, doubtless, so