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.

Though marriage was in many ways hedged about with safeguards, there
existed in the earliest times at Plymouth a form of public betrothal
which too often was considered as sufficient by the parties thereto. It
was called a pre-contract, but was not entirely binding. There was
usually a sermon preached on the occasion of the ceremony, and it was
the custom to allow the bride to choose the text which she thought most
applicable to the general or particular circumstances of the case.
Marriage was for long by banns, and the ceremony was at first performed
by magistrates and not by clergymen. This fact, as well as the further
fact that any "man of dignity" came under the generic title of
"magistrate" in the meaning of the custom, gave rise to many
complications and no little scandal--as in the case of old Governor
Bellingham, who when a widower of forty-nine married himself to Penelope
Pelham, who was not half his age. This acting in the dual capacity of
bridegroom and magistrate was a little too much for the patience of the
community, and the governor was called upon to stand trial for his
offence; but as he insisted upon his prerogative of occupying the bench
the result was not edifying.

There were many local customs at marriages