During the first years of our planting they were a
greater rarity than the mocking-birds and flying squirrels, or than
that weed the eating of which made fools of men. The man whose
wife was loving and daring enough, or jealous enough of Indian
maids, to follow him into the wilderness counted his friends by the
score and never lacked for company. The first marriage in Virginia
was between a laborer and a waiting maid, and yet there was as
great a deal of candy stuff as if it had been the nuptials of a
lieutenant of the shire. The brother of my Lord de la Warre stood
up with the groom, the brother of my Lord of Northumberland
gave away the bride and was the first to kiss her, and the President
himself held the caudle to their lips that night. Since that wedding
there had been others. Gentlewomen made the Virginia voyage
with husband or father; women signed as servants and came over,
to marry in three weeks' time, the husband paying good tobacco for
the wife's freedom; in the cargoes of children sent for apprentices
there were many girls. And last, but not least, had come Sir
Edwyn's doves. Things had changed since that day - at the memory
of which men still held their sides - when Madam West, then the
only woman in the town with youth and beauty, had marched down
the street to the pillory, mounted it, called to her the drummer, and
ordered him to summon to the square by tuck of drum every man
in the place.
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