ween
husband and wife we have conclusive evidence that woman was held in high
respect, her advice often asked, and her influence marked. The letters
of Governor Winthrop to his wife Margaret might be offered as striking
illustrations of the confidence, sympathy, and love existing in colonial
home life. Thus, he writes from England: "My Dear Wife: Commend my Love
to them all. I kisse & embrace thee, my deare wife, & all my children, &
leave thee in His armes who is able to preserve you all, & to fulfill
our joye in our happye meeting in His good time. Amen. Thy faithfull
husband." And again just before leaving England he writes to her: "I
must begin now to prepare thee for our long parting which growes very
near. I know not how to deal with thee by arguments; for if thou wert as
wise and patient as ever woman was, yet it must needs be a great trial
to thee, and the greater because I am so dear to thee. That which I must
chiefly look at in thee for thy ground of contentment is thy godliness."

Nor were the wife's replies less warm and affectionate. Hear this bit
from a letter of three centuries ago: "MY MOST SWEET HUSBAND:--How
dearely welcome thy kinde letter was to me I am not able to expresse.
The sweetnesse of it did much refresh me. What can be more pleasinge to
a wife, than to heare of the welfayre of her best beloved, and how he is
pleased with hir pore endevors.... I wish that I may be all-wayes
pleasinge to thee, and that those comforts we have in each other may be
dayly increced as far as they be pleasinge to God.... I will doe any
service whearein I may please my good Husband. I confess I cannot doe
ynough for thee...."

Is it not evident that passionate, reverent love, amounting almost to
adoration, was fairly common in those early days? Numerous other
writings of the colonial period could add their testimony. Sometimes
the proof is in the letters of men longing for home and family;
sometimes in the messages of the wife longing for the return of her
"goodman"; sometimes it is discerned in bits of verse, such as those by
Ann Bradstreet, or in an enthusiastic description of a woman, such as
that by Jonathan Edwards about his future wife. Note the fervor of this
famous eulogy by the "coldly logical" Edwards; can it be excelled in
genuine warmth by the love letters of famous men in later days?

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that
Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that