So after all that has been said of the practice of bundling in our
country, by foreign writers, travelers, and reviewers--after all the
reproach that has been heaped upon us, now that we are able to get at
the plain truth, it appears to be, though certainly a bad practice, not
half so bad as the junketing and sitting up courtships that are known
elsewhere. Nay, more. Though in the present state of society it is a
practice that should be utterly discountenanced everywhere, still it
would seem to have grown up out of the peculiar circumstances of our
first settlers; to be confined _now_ to remote and small districts (for
I have heard of only three instances, after all my inquiry); and to be
rapidly going out of practice. Yet more; there can be no bad intentions,
there can be no evil consequences, where respectable and modest women
are not ashamed to acknowledge that they bundle. I am anxious to know
the truth for the purpose of correcting both the _misrepresentations_
that are abroad, and the _practices_ that prevail here. Bundling,
however, is known in other countries, where they have less excuse, and
in Wales where they do _not_ bundle, as I have said before, it is no
reproach for a woman to have had a child before marriage. It was so in
Russia after Catharine established her lying-in hospitals.

In the next number of _The Yankee_ (August 20th) there is the following
editorial paragraph:


BUNDLING.

There is a great outcry just now about the paper on bundling which
was in the last _Yankee_. Now this very outcry proves the want of
the very paper alluded to. The article is about bundling; and people