Where, then, is the difference in principle between
our measures and those you are so ready to condemn
among the people I am treating of? There is none;
the difference is merely circumstantial. Thus
we denounce, instead of banishing—we libel,
instead of scourging—we turn out of office,
instead of hanging—and where they burnt
an offender in proper person, we either tar and feather,
or burn him in effigy—this political persecution
being, somehow or other, the grand palladium of our
liberties, and an incontrovertible proof that this
is a free country!
But not withstanding the fervent zeal with which this
holy war was prosecuted against the whole race of
unbelievers, we do not find that the population of
this new colony was in anywise hindered thereby; on
the contrary, they multiplied to a degree which would
be incredible to any man unacquainted with the marvelous
fecundity of this growing country.
This amazing increase may, indeed, be partly ascribed
to a singular custom prevalent among them, commonly
known by the name of bundling—a superstitious
rite observed by the young people of both sexes, with
which they usually terminated their festivities, and
which was kept up with religious strictness by the
more bigoted part of the community. This ceremony
was likewise, in those primitive times, considered
as an indispensable preliminary to matrimony, their
courtships commencing where ours usually finish; by
which means they acquired that intimate acquaintance
with each other’s good qualities before marriage,
which has been pronounced by philosophers the sure
basis of a happy union. Thus early did this cunning
and ingenious people display a shrewdness of making
a bargain which has ever since distinguished them,
and a strict adherence to the good old vulgar maxim
about “buying a pig in a poke.”
To this sagacious custom, therefore, do I chiefly
attribute the unparalleled increase of the Yanokie
or Yankee race: for it is a certain fact, well
authenticated by court records and parish registers,
that wherever the practice of bundling prevailed,
there was an amazing number of sturdy brats annually
born unto the state, without the license of the law
or the benefit of clergy. Neither did the irregularity
of their birth operate in the least to their disparagement.
On the contrary, they grew up a long-sided, raw-boned,
hardy race of whalers, wood-cutters, fishermen, and
pedlars, and strapping corn-fed wenches, who, by their
united efforts, tended marvelously toward peopling
those notable tracts of country called Nantucket,
Piscataway, and Cape Cod.
In the last chapter I have given a faithful and unprejudiced
account of the origin of that singular race of people
inhabiting the country eastward of the Nieuw Nederlandts,
but I have yet to mention certain peculiar habits
which rendered them exceedingly annoying to our ever-honored
Dutch ancestors.
