.

[198] _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 228.

[199] _Diary_, Vol. II, p. 216.

[200] _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 410.

[201] _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 157.

[202] _Diary_, Vol. I, p. 355.

[203] _Diary_, Vol. III, p. 316.

[204] _Diary_, Vol. III, p. 394.

[205] _Diary_, p. 60.

[206] _Diary_, p. 81.

[207] Vol. I, p. 159.

[208] Vol. III, p. 1.

[209] Vol. I, p. 223.

[210] Page 136.

[211] Page 33.

[212] _Memoirs_, p. 29.

[213] _Memoirs_: p. 53.

[214] _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 35.

[215] Grant: _Memoirs of an American Lady_, pp. 55-57.

[216] Grant: _Memoirs_, p. 62.

[217a], [217b] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 77.

[218] Page 83.

[219] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 214.

[220] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 213.

[221] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 215.

[222] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 209.

[223] Page 195.

[224] Page 24.

[225] Wharton: _Martha Washington_, p. 230.

[226] Page 45.

[227] Robertson: _Louisiana under Spain, France, and U.S._, Vol. I, p.
70.

[228] Robertson: Vol. I, p. 85.

[229] Robertson, Vol. I, p. 216.

CHAPTER VI

COLONIAL WOMAN AND MARRIAGE

_I. New England Weddings_

Of course, practically every American novel dealing with the colonial
period--or any other period, for that matter--closes with a marriage and
a hint that they lived happily ever afterwards. Did they indeed? To
satisfy our curiosity about this point let us examine those early
customs that dealt with courtship, marriage, punishment for offenses
against the marriage law, and the general status of woman after
marriage.

For many years a wedding among the Puritans was a very quiet affair
totally unlike the ceremony in the South, where feasting, dancing, and
merry-making were almost always accompaniments. For information about
the occasion in Massachusetts we may, of course, turn to the inevitable
Judge Sewall. As a guest he saw innumerable weddings; as a magistrate he
performed many; as one of the two principal participants he took part in
several. He has left us a record of his own frequent courtships, of how
he was rejected or accepted, and of his life after the acceptances; and
from it all one may make a rather fair analysis not only of the
conventional methods and domestic manners of New England but also of the
character and spirit of the other sex during such trying occasions. The
evidence shows that while a young woman was generally given her cho