It is not so now. To have had a
child before marriage would now be fatal to a woman here, whatever might
be her condition or beauty; fatal in every shape. No man would have
courage to marry her; no woman of character would associate with her.
Ask the first individual you meet, above the age of twelve or thirteen
here, and you may have the name and history of every poor girl in the
neighborhood who has been so unlucky as to have a child of her own
without leave, perhaps, within a period of six or eight years in a
populous neighborhood of twenty or thirty miles about. A widow with half
a score of children, forty years ago, if we may believe Dr. Franklin,
was an object for the fortune hunters of America. It is not so now. The
demand for widows, and for every sort of ready made family is beginning
to be over.
That which is called bundling here, though bad enough, is not a
twentieth part so bad. Here it is only a mode of courtship. The parties
instead of sitting up together, go to bed together; but go to bed with
their clothes on. This would appear to be a perilous fashion; but I have
been assured by the individual above, that he had proof to the contrary;
for in the particular case alluded to, the only case I ever heard of on
good authority, although he was invited by the parents of a pretty girl
who stood near him, to bundle with her, and although he _did_ bundle
with her, he had every reason to believe, that if he had been very free,
or more free than he might have been at a country frolick after they had
invited him to escort her, to sit up with her, to dance with her, he
would have been treated as a traitor by all parties.
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