Concubinage and fornication are vices none of them are addicted to, except such as forsake the laws of Hobbomockow and turn christians. The savages have taken many female prisoners, carried them back three hundred miles into their country, and kept them several years, and yet not a single instance of their violating the laws of chastity has ever been known. This cannot be said of the French, or of the English, whenever Indian or other women have fallen into their hands. I am no advocate for temptation, yet must say that bundling has prevailed 160 years in New-England, and, I verily believe, with ten times more chastity than the sitting on a sofa. About the year 1756, Boston, Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be more polite than their ancestors, forbade their daughters bundling on the bed with any young man whatever, and introduced a sofa, to render courtship more palatable and Turkish. Whatever it was owing to, whether to the sofa or any uncommon excess of the _feu d’esprit_, there went abroad a report that the _raffinage_ produced more natural consequences than all the bundling among the boors with their _rurales pendantes_ through every village in New-England besides. In 1766, a clergyman from one of the polite towns went into the country and preached against the unchristian custom of young men and maidens lying together upon the same bed. He was no sooner out of the Church, than attacked by a shoal of good old women, with, “Sir, do you think we and our daughters are naughty because we allow bundling?” “You lead yourselves into temptation by it.” They all replied at once, “Sir, have you been told thus, or has experience taught you?” The Levite began to lift his eyes and to consider his situation, and, bowing, said, “I have been told so.” The ladies, _una voce_, bawled out, “Your informants, sir, we conclude, are those city ladies who prefer a sofa to a bed. We advise you to alter your sermon by substituting the word sofa for bundling, and, on your return home, preach to them: for experience has told us that city-folks send more children into the country without father and mother to own them, than are born among us; therefore, you see, a sofa is more dangerous than a bed.” The poor priest, seemingly convinced of his blunder, exclaimed, “_Nec vitia nostra, nec remedia pati possumus_,” hoping hereby to get rid of his guests; but an old matron pulled off her spectacles, and, looking the priest in the face like a Roman heroine, said, “_Noli putare me hæc auribus tuis dares_.” Others cried out to the priest to explain his Latin. “The English,” he said, “is this: Woe to me that I sojourn in Meseck, and dwell in the tents of Kedar!” One pertly replied, “_Gladii decussati sunt gemina presbytericalvis_.” The priest confessed his error, begged pardon, and promised never more to preach against bundling, or to think amiss of the custom; the ladies generously forgave him, and went away.