Mr. William C. Prime, in his delightful book, "Along New England Roads," gives an account of such a marriage. In Newfane, Vt., in February, 1789, Major Moses Joy married Widow Hannah Ward; the bride stood, with no clothing on, within a closet, and held out her hand to the major through a diamond-shaped hole in the door, and the ceremony was thus performed. She then appeared resplendent in wedding attire, which the gallant major had thoughtfully deposited in the closet for her assumption. Mr. Prime tells also of a marriage in which the bride, entirely unclad, left her room by a window at night, and standing on the top round of a high ladder donned her wedding garments, and thus put off the obligations of the old life.

In Hall's "History of Eastern Vermont," we read of a marriage in Westminster, Vt., in which the Widow Lovejoy, while nude and hidden in a chimney recess behind a curtain, wedded Asa Averill. Smock-marriages on the public highway are recorded in York, Me., in 1774, as shown in the History of Wells and Kennebunkport. It is said that in one case the pitying minister threw his coat over the shivering bride, Widow Mary Bradley, who in February, clad only in a shift, met the bridegroom half way from her home to his.

The traveller Kalm, writing in 1748, says that one Pennsylvania bridegroom saved appearances by meeting the scantily-clad widow-bride half way from her house to his, and announcing formally, in the presence of witnesses, that the wedding clothes which he then put on her were only lent to her for the occasion. This is curiously suggestive of the marriage investiture of Eastern Hindostan.

In Westerly, R. I., in 1724, other smock-marriages were recorded, and in Lincoln County, Me., in 1767, between John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman, showing that the belief in this vulgar error was wide-spread. The most curious variation of this custom is told in the "Life of Gustavus Vassa," wherein that traveller records that a smock-marriage took place in New York in 1784 on a gallows. A malefactor condemned to death, and about to undergo his execution, was reprieved and liberated through his marriage to a woman clad only in a shift.

In spite of the hardness and narrowness of their daily life, and the cold calculation, the lack of sentiment displayed in wooing, I think Puritan husbands and wives were happy in their marriages, though their love was shy, almost sombre, and "flowered out of sight like the fern." A few love-letters still remain to prove their affection: letters of sweethearts and