We learn that it was a former custom to cut the bride-cake into little squares or dice, small enough to be passed through the wedding-ring. A slice drawn through the ring thrice (some have it nine times), and afterward put under the pillow, will make an unmarried man or woman dream of his or her future wife or husband. This is another of those old customs of which trial is so often made “just for the fun of the thing, you know!” The _Charivari_, or mock serenade, is another custom still much affected in many places, notably so in our rural districts, though to our own mind “more honored in the breach than in the observance.” The averred object is to make “night hideous,” and is usually completely successful. In the wee sma’ hours, while sleeping peacefully in their beds, the newly wedded pair are suddenly awakened by a most infernal din under their windows, caused by the blowing of tin horns, the thumping of tin pans, ringing of cowbells, and like instruments of torture. To get rid of his tormentors the bridegroom is expected to hold an impromptu reception, or, in other words, “to treat the crowd,” which is more often the real object of this silly affair, to which we fail to discover one redeeming feature. The custom of wearing the wedding ring upon the left hand originated, so we are told, in the common belief that the left hand lay nearest to the heart. As is well known, the Puritans tried to abolish the use of the ring in marriage. According to Butler in “Hudibras”:-- “Others were for abolishing That tool of matrimony--a ring With which the unsatisfied bridegroom Is married only to a thumb.” The times have indeed changed since in the early days of New England no Puritan maiden would have been married with a ring for worlds. When Edward Winslow was cited before the Lord’s Commissioners of Plantations, upon the complaint of Thomas Morton, he was asked among other things about the marriage customs practised in the colony. He answered frankly that the ceremony was performed by magistrates. Morton, his accuser, declares that the people of New England held the use of a ring in marriage to be “a relic of popery, a diabolical circle for the Devell to daunce in.”