It is evident that the family of Benjamin Franklin himself were somewhat addicted to gauds and fripperies. About this same date, George Washington is found writing to England for certain articles of dress for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis, then but four years of age; and for this miniature bit of humanity he orders such things as packthread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks for her face, caps, bonnets, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and leather pumps, while for her small hands were ordered eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs of gloves. We are told on excellent authority that at this time the "Southern dames, especially of Annapolis, Baltimore, and Charleston, were said to have the richest brocades and damasks that could be bought in London." Small simplicity here; and the goodwives of New York and New England were learning to follow their leaders in the fashions. Yet in manners there was in the North still a leaven of the old Puritan sternness. The Rev. Mr. Burnaby, who published a book called _Travels in America in 1759_, records therein that when the captain of a British man-of-war, who had left his wife at Boston while he was on a cruise, was met by his spouse on his return, he very naturally kissed her in the sight of all men, the meeting taking place on the public wharf. But this act was against the statute which forbade kissing on the street as a great indecency, and the reprobate captain was promptly haled before the magistrates. It will hardly be believed that these gentlemen actually sentenced the Englishman to be whipped and had the sentence executed; and though to be whipped was not then considered a greater disgrace than now to incur a fine, it is nevertheless pleasant to a modern to read that the captain, when later he had become most popular in Boston, invited his judges to a dinner on board his ship and there had them triced up to the rigging and to each meted out the Scriptural forty stripes save one. But the incident shows us the moral atmosphere of New England at least in some of its parts; for it is unfortunately undeniable that in Connecticut the abominable practice of "bundling" was at the height of prevalence and popularity about 1750. The inevitable reaction came a little later, however, and the fulminations of Jonathan Edwards and his fellows at last came to have their effect; and by the end of the Revolution the custom was no longer recognized by any respectable community, with one or two marked exceptions, and these exceptions ceased to be such before the coming of the new century. Yet as late as 1775 we find the diary of Abigail Foote--from which we shall later make a more edifying extract--recording as a matter of course the fact of Ellen Foote, sister to the writer, bundling with a young man "till sun about 3 hours high." It is pleasant to read that a few weeks later the pair were "cried" and married.