Nor were the wife's replies less warm and affectionate. Hear this bit from a letter of three centuries ago: "MY MOST SWEET HUSBAND:--How dearely welcome thy kinde letter was to me I am not able to expresse. The sweetnesse of it did much refresh me. What can be more pleasinge to a wife, than to heare of the welfayre of her best beloved, and how he is pleased with hir pore endevors.... I wish that I may be all-wayes pleasinge to thee, and that those comforts we have in each other may be dayly increced as far as they be pleasinge to God.... I will doe any service whearein I may please my good Husband. I confess I cannot doe ynough for thee...." Is it not evident that passionate, reverent love, amounting almost to adoration, was fairly common in those early days? Numerous other writings of the colonial period could add their testimony. Sometimes the proof is in the letters of men longing for home and family; sometimes in the messages of the wife longing for the return of her "goodman"; sometimes it is discerned in bits of verse, such as those by Ann Bradstreet, or in an enthusiastic description of a woman, such as that by Jonathan Edwards about his future wife. Note the fervor of this famous eulogy by the "coldly logical" Edwards; can it be excelled in genuine warmth by the love letters of famous men in later days? "They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight and that she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him--that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always.... Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind.... She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure.... She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her." In several poems Ann Bradstreet, daughter of Gov. Thomas Dudley, and wife of Simon Bradstreet, mother of eight children, and first of the women poets of America, expressed rather ardently for a Puritan dame, her love for her husband. Thus: