make-shift arrangement, often arising from the necessities of a new
country, and by no means peculiar to America; and, secondly, between
_lovers_, who shared the same couch, with the mutual understanding that
innocent endearments should not be exceeded. It was, however, in either
case, a custom of convenience.

We may notice, in this connection, that it is very common, even at the
present day, in New England, to speak of one as having "bundled in with
his clothes on," if he goes to bed without undressing; as, for instance,
if he came home drunk, or feeling slightly ill, lay down in the daytime,
or in a cold night found the blankets too scanty.

The point which first claims our attention in the discussion of this
custom, is its probable _origin_, and its _antiquity_ in


THE BRITISH ISLES.


For, though British travelers have uniformly endeavored to fix the odium
of this custom upon us their transatlantic cousins, as being peculiarly
"An American institution," it is, nevertheless, an indisputable fact
that bundling has for centuries flourished within their own kingdom. For
what else, in fact, was that universal custom of promiscuous sleeping
together which prevailed among the ancient Britons at the time of the
Roman conquest, and which led Cæsar to consider them as polyandrous
polygamists, and other ancient writers to give them an unenviable
character for morality?[1] Bundling, of course! in its rudest aboriginal
form.