Although parents might be prosecuted for "unreasonably denying any child timely or convenient marriage,"[504] it is evident that lovers had to be very circumspect in old colonial days. In a community where power to dispose of a son or daughter in wedlock was believed to be the gift of heaven, it is not strange that "allowance" was sometimes hard to gain. Praising the chaste reserve of the gentle "old maid" of Boston whom he had learned to admire, John Dunton thus expresses the dominant view: "I am sure this is most agreeable to the _Virgin modesty_, which should make Marriage an act" rather of "obedience" than "choice." "And they that think their Friends too _slowpaced_ in the matter give certain proof that lust is the sole motive."[505] Nor was the average New England house-father at all likely to allow sentiment to get the better of prudence in seeking a match for his child. He was more apt to be governed by a spirit of cold calculation which never for an instant lost sight of the "main chance." Judge Sewall, for example, can hardly be called "slowpaced" in providing his daughters with wooers. He superintends the whole "business" of love-making with never-flagging zeal. Poor, timid daughter Betty is fairly worried into matrimony, perhaps as the only sure way of escaping her father's nagging. What a procession of "captains" and "persons of worth" he parades before the reluctant girl before he succeeds in gaining his will! The first who "wished to speak with her" is Captain Tuthill, who appears as a suitor when she is but seventeen years of age. After the judge had made careful and satisfactory inquiry as to the captain's estate--which he finds valued at £600 or £700--and the young man "in good Business, and like to be in better;"[506] and after having his daughter read to him about the courtship of Adam and Eve "as a soothing and alluring preparation for the thought of matrimony,"[507] the lover is invited to call. Of this visit and its surprising result Sewall thus writes in his _Diary_: "At night Capt. Tuthill comes to speak with Betty, who hid her self all alone in the coach for several hours till he was gon, so that we sought at several houses, till at last came in of her self, and look'd very wild."[508] A number of others in rapid succession have little better luck with the coy maiden. The next fall, however, on returning from a journey to Rhode Island, the judge finds his "family in health, only disturb'd at Betty's denying Mr. Hirst." A month later he sadly records that he supposes even this suitor has "taken his final leave."[509] Nevertheless two days after, on October 26, 1699, he addresses Betty at "Brantry," where she had gone on a visit, the following characteristic letter: