IN HOLLAND,
Under the name of queesting.[15] At night the lover has access to his mistress after she is in bed; and, upon an application to be admitted upon the bed, which of course is granted, he raises the quilt, or rug, and in this state queests, or enjoys a harmless chit-chat with her, and then retires. This custom meets with the perfect sanction of the most circumspect parents, and the freedom is seldom abused. The author traces its origin to the parsimony of the people, whose economy considers fire and candles as superfluous luxuries in the long winter evenings."
The Hon. Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn, N. Y., late United States minister at the Hague, has furnished us with the following note in relation to this Nederduitsche custom: "As to its being a Dutch custom, it was so to a limited extent in Holland in former times, and may yet be, though I did not hear of it when I was there. Sewell gives the word queesten, or kweesten, in his dictionary, printed over a century ago. The word is defined in the dictionary of Wieland, the principal lexicographer in that country, as follows: 'Kweesten. Upon the islands of Texel and Vlieland[16] they use this word for a singular custom of wooing, by which the doors and windows are left open, and the lover, lying or sitting outside the covering, woos the girl who is underneath.' Sewell confines the custom to certain islands or lands near the sea."