with you nor with any other man." "Then farewell, proud girl," said
he. "Farewell, honest man," said I, and off he went sure enough.

"'I have since made inquiries about _bundling_, and find that it is
_really_ the custom here, and that they think no more harm of it,
than we do our way of a young couple sitting up together. I have
known an instance, since I have been here, of a girl's taking her
sweetheart to a neighbor's house and asking for a bed or two to
lodge in, or rather to _bundle_ in. They had company at her
father's, so that their beds were occupied; she thought no harm of
it. She and her family are respectable.

"'Grandmother says bundling was a very common thing in our part of
the country, in old times; that most of the first settlers lived in
log houses, which seldom had more than one room with a fire place;
in this room the old people slept, so if one of their girls had a
sweetheart in the winter she must either sit with him in the room
where her father and mother slept, or take him into her sleeping
room. She would choose the latter for the sake of being alone with
him; but sometimes when the cold was very severe, rather than freeze
to death, they would crawl under the bed-clothes; and this, after a
while, became a habit, a custom, or a fashion. The man that I am
going to send this by, is just ready to start, so I cannot stop to
write more now. In my next I'll give you a more particular account
of the people here. Adieu.'

"_Mr. Editor_, you may be sure that what is related in the foregoing
letter is the truth. I know that there is considerable _other_
information in it, mixed up with _that_ about which you wished to be
informed, but I could not very well separate it."