"'Don't be too severe upon us, Miss ——, I have always observed that those who make believe so much modesty, have in reality but little. I always act as I feel, and speak as I think. I wish you to do the same, but have none of your make-believes with me—you smile—you begin to think you have been a little too scrupulous—you have no objection to bundling now, have you?" "Indeed I have." "I am not to be trifled with; so, if you refuse, I have done with you forever." "Then be done as quick as you please, for I'll not bundle 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."
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 who imagine bundling to be what it is not, a highly improper and unchaste familiarity, are offended with it; but the very purpose of that paper is to show that bundling is not what it is believed to be, that it is neither so common nor so bad, not a fiftieth part so bad as people have imagined.