Proverbs xxiv. 23: "Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land." Ecclesiastes iv. 9, 10: "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall the one will lift up his fellow." I can imagine the staid New England lover and his shy sweetheart anxiously and solemnly searching for many hours through the great leather-bound family Bible for a specially appropriate text, turning over the leaves and slowing scanning the pages, skipping over tedious Leviticus and Numbers, and finding always in the Song of Solomon "in almost every verse" a sentiment appealing to all lovers, and worthy a selection for a wedding sermon. The "coming out," or, as it was called in Newburyport, "walking out" of the bride was an important event in the little community. Cotton Mather wrote in 1713 that he thought it expedient for the bridal couple to appear as such publicly, with some dignity. We see in the pages of Sewall's diary one of his daughters with her new-made husband leading the orderly bridal procession of six couples on the way to church, observed of all in the narrow Boston street and in the Puritan meeting-house. In some communities the bride and groom took a prominent seat in the gallery, and in the midst of the sermon rose to their feet and turned around several times slowly, in order to show from every point of view their bridal finery to the admiring eyes of their assembled friends and neighbors in the congregation.