Indeed, can it be for one moment
supposed that the good Hollanders--a most unchanging and conservative
race--should have been so far false to the traditions of their fathers,
and the honor of the fatherland, as to leave behind them, when they
crossed the seas, the good old custom of _queesting_, with its
time-honored associations and delights? Or can it be imagined that those
astute lawgivers and political economists, the early governors and
burgomasters, were so blind to the necessities and interests of a new
and sparsely populated country, as to forbid bundling within their
borders? Indeed, it would be but a sorry compliment to the wisdom of
that sagacious and far-sighted body of merchants comprised in the High
and Mighty West India Company, to believe that they were unwilling to
introduce under their benign auspices, a custom so intimately connected
with their own national social habits, and so promising to the
prospective interests and enlargement of their _new plantations_, as
this. And, truly, Diedrich himself, doth, in another part of his book,
inadvertently betray the fact that bundling was by no means a purely
Yankee trick, for he speaks of the redoubtable Anthony Van
Corlaer--purest of Dutchmen--as "passing through Hartford, and Pyquag,
and Middletown, and all the other border towns, twanging his trumpet
like a very devil, so that the sweet valleys and banks of the
Connecticut resounded with the warlike melody, and stopping occasionally
to eat pumpkin pies, dance at country frolics, and _bundle_ with the
beauteous lasses of those parts, whom he rejoiced exceedingly with his
soul-stirring instrument.
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