Customs and Fashions in Old New England

								

makers, and to prevent their unsanctioned lovers from being punished,
too. Hear the craft of Sarah Tuttle. On May day in New Haven, in 1660,
she went to the house of a neighbor, Dame Murline, to get some thread.
Some very loud jokes were exchanged between Sarah and her friends Maria
and Susan Murline--so loud, in fact, that Dame Murline testified in
court that it "much distressed her and put her in a sore strait." In the
midst of all this doubtful fun Jacob Murline entered, and seizing
Sarah's gloves, demanded the centuries old forfeit of a kiss.
"Wherupon," writes the scandalized Puritan chronicler, "they sat down
together; his arm being about her; and her arm upon his shoulder or
about his neck; and hee kissed her, and shee kissed him, or they kissed
one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour, as Maria and
Susan testified." Goodman Tuttle, who was a man of dignity and
importance, angrily brought suit against Jacob for inveigling his
daughter's affections; "but Sarah being asked in court if Jacob
inveagled her, said No." This of course prevented any rendering of
judgment against the unauthorized kissing by Jacob, and he escaped the
severe punishment of his offence. But the outraged and baffled court
fined Sarah, and gave her a severe lecture, calling her with justice a
"Bould Virgin." She at the end, demurely and piously answered that "She
hoped God would help her to carry it Better for time to come." And
doubtless she did carry it better; for at the end of two years, this
bold virgin's fine for unruly behavior being still unpaid, half of it
was remitted.
Of the etiquette, the pleasures, the exigencies of colonial "courtship
in high life," let one of the actors speak for himself through the pages
of his diary. Judge Sewall's first wife was Hannah Hull, the only
daughter of Captain Hull of Pine Tree Shilling fame. She received as her
dowry her weight in silver shillings. Of her wooing we know naught save
the charming imaginary story told us by Hawthorne. The Judge's only
record is this:



     "Mrs. Hannah Hull saw me when I took my Degree and set her

     affection on me though I knew nothing of it till after our

     Marriage."
She lived with him forty-three years, bore him seven sons and seven
daughters, and died on the 19th day of October, 1717.
Of course, though the Judge was sixty-six years old, he would marry
again. Like a true Puritan he despised an unmarried life, and on the 6th
day of February he made this naive entry in his diary: "Wandering in my
mind whether to live a Married or a Single Life." Ere that date he had
begun to take notice. He had called more than once on Widow Ruggles, and
had had Widow Gill to dine with him; had looked critically at Widow
Emery, and noted that Widow Tilley was absent from meeting; and he had
gazed admiringly at Widow Winthrop in "her sley," and he had visited
and counseled and consoled her ere his wife had been two months dead,
and had given her a few suitable tokens of his awakening affection such