[Here he refers to the charge reported of New Englanders, that that they
_eat pork and molasses--pork and molasses_ TOGETHER, which is here
denied as a ridiculous story. H. R. S.]
They bundle in Wales; bundling there is a serious matter. A lady--a
Welsh woman whose word is truth itself--assured me not long ago, that in
her country they do not think a bit the worse, of a girl for
anticipating her duties, in other words, for being a mother before she
has been a wife; they have discovered, perhaps, that cause and effect
may be convertible terms; that in such a serious matter, none but a fool
would buy a pig in the poke, and that, after all, maternity may lead to
marriage there, as marriage leads to maternity here. And why not? for
after the establishment of the lying-in hospitals of Russia, the
unmarried who bore _children to the state_ were proud of the duty, and
were looked upon, we are told, with great favor by the public. She
added, also, that she was once at a party made up of sixteen or eighteen
females, and females of good characters, all but one or two of whom were
mothers, or had been so, before they were married. By Chastelleux and
his English translator it would appear to have been very much the same
in America about the years 1780-1-2.
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