HOP-CRIBBING,
though nearly banished by the advance of education and improved manners, is occasionally performed in the secluded parts of this district. The usage is, that when a male stranger has to pass through the hop ground, he is seized by the women of the picking party, and threatened to be pitched into the crib (an article like a large cradle or child's crib, into which the hops are picked), and then to be smothered with the caresses of all the oldest and most snuffy women present, unless he will "shell out" something handsome to be spent in liquor. If he be young and cleanly, the chances are ten to one that he prefers paying the fine. Sometimes respectable women have been cribbed; but in all instances that have been brought before the magistrates, the law's supremacy over absurd custom has been vindicated.