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Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America by Henry Reed Stiles
page 23 of 89 (25%)
influenced more by lust, than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to
behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to _bundle_. If any man,
thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God, and the Christian
religion, should _bundle_ with a young lady in New England, and behave
himself unseemly towards her, he must first melt her into passion, and
expel heaven, death, and hell, from her mind, or he will undergo the
chastisement of negroes turned mad--if he escape with life, it will be
owing to the parents flying from their bed to protect him. The Indians,
who had this method of courtship when the English arrived among them in
1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world. Concubinage and
fornication are vices none of them are addicted to, except such as
forsake the laws of Hobbamockow and turn Christians. The savages have
taken many female prisoners, carried them back three hundred miles into
their country, and kept them several years, and yet not a single
instance of their violating the laws of chastity has ever been known.
This cannot be said of the French, or of the English, whenever Indian or
other women have fallen into their hands. I am no advocate for
temptation; yet must say, that _bundling_ has prevailed 160 years in New
England, and, I verily believe, with ten times more chastity than the
sitting on a sofa. I had daughters, and speak from near forty years'
experience. _Bundling_ takes place only in cold seasons of the year--the
sofa in summer is more dangerous than the bed in winter. About the year
1756, Boston, Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be more polite
than their ancestors, forbade their daughters _bundling_ on the bed with
any young man whatever, and introduced a sofa to render courtship more
palatable and Turkish, whatever it was owing to, whether to the sofa, or
any uncommon excess of the _feu d'esprit_, there went abroad a report
that this _raffinage_ produced more _natural consequences_ then all the
_bundling_ among the boors with their _rurales pedantes_, through every
village in New England besides.
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