erica in 1759_, records therein that when the captain of a British
man-of-war, who had left his wife at Boston while he was on a cruise,
was met by his spouse on his return, he very naturally kissed her in the
sight of all men, the meeting taking place on the public wharf. But this
act was against the statute which forbade kissing on the street as a
great indecency, and the reprobate captain was promptly haled before the
magistrates. It will hardly be believed that these gentlemen actually
sentenced the Englishman to be whipped and had the sentence executed;
and though to be whipped was not then considered a greater disgrace than
now to incur a fine, it is nevertheless pleasant to a modern to read
that the captain, when later he had become most popular in Boston,
invited his judges to a dinner on board his ship and there had them
triced up to the rigging and to each meted out the Scriptural forty
stripes save one. But the incident shows us the moral atmosphere of New
England at least in some of its parts; for it is unfortunately
undeniable that in Connecticut the abominable practice of "bundling" was
at the height of prevalence and popularity about 1750. The inevitable
reaction came a little later, however, and the fulminations of Jonathan
Edwards and his fellows at last came to have their effect; and by the
end of the Revolution the custom was no longer recognized by any
respectable community, with one or two marked exceptions, and these
exceptions ceased to be such before the coming of the new century. Yet
as late as 1775 we find the diary of Abigail Foote--from which we shall
later make a more edifying extract--recording as a matter of course the
fact of Ellen Foote, sister to the writer, bundling with a young man
"till sun about 3 hours high." It is pleasant to read that a few weeks
later the pair were "cried" and married.

Such were the curious contradictions of customs and morals found among
our Puritan forefathers: a man might not kiss his wife in the street,
but an unmarried woman might, if clothed, spend the night in bed with
her lover. There were many other contradictions of manners. For
instance, what could be more suggestive of utter simplicity than the
diary of Abigail Foote, to which reference has just been made? I will
quote an extract from it as an example of the life spent by young girls
of her time. Abigail wrote in 1775, and she lived in Colchester,
Connecticut. Here is a record of one of her days: