The Gentlemans Parents keep Open house just in the same manner as the Brides Parents. The Gentlemen go from the Bridegroom house to drink punch with and give Joy to his Father. The Brides visitors go in the same manner from the Brides to her mothers to pay their compliments to her. There is so much driving about at these times that in our narrow streets there is some danger. The Wedding house resembles a beehive. Company perpetually flying in and out. In a new country, with novel methods of living, and unusual social relations, there were some wild and furious wooings. None were more coarsely extraordinary than the courting of young Mistress Burwell by the Governor of the colony of Virginia, an intemperate, blustering English ruffian named Nicholson. He demanded her hand in an Orientally autocratic manner, and when neither she nor her parents regarded him with favor, his rage and determination knew no bounds. He threatened the lives of her father and mother “with mad furious distracted speech.” When Parson Fouace came, meekly riding to visit poor Mr. Burwell, his parishioner, who was sick (naturally enough), the Governor set upon him with words of abuse, pulled the clerical hat off, drew his sword, and threatened the clerical life, until the parson fled in dismay. Fancying that the brother of Commissary Blair, the President of the Virginia College, was a would-be suitor to his desired fair one, he assailed the President with insane jealousy, saying, “Sir, your brother is a villain and you have betrayed me,” and he swore revenge on the entire family. To annoy further the good President, he lent his pistols to the wicked college boys that they might thus keep the President out of the college buildings. He vowed if Mistress Burwell married any one but himself he would cut the throat of bridegroom, minister, and justice who issued the marriage license. The noise of his abuse reached England, and friends wrote from thence protesting letters to him. At last the Council united and succeeded in procuring his removal. Poor President Blair did not fare well under other governors, and both College and President were fiercely hated by Governor Andros; and “a sparkish young gentleman,” the grandfather of Martha Washington’s first husband, to show his zeal for his gubernatorial friend, went into church and “with great fury and violence” pulled Mrs. Blair out of her pew in the face of the minister and the whole congregation--and this in the stately old cavalier days. One very curious duty devolved on young girls at that day. They often served as pall-bearers. At the funeral of Mrs. Daniel Phœnix the pall-bearers were women, and when Mrs. John Morgan, sister of Francis Hopkinson, died in Philadelphia, her brother wrote of her funeral:-- The morning was snowy and severely cold, and the walking very dangerous and slippery, never the less a number of respectable citizens attended the funeral and the pall was borne by the first ladies of the place.