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In the first years of the colonies there existed a formal ceremony of betrothal called in Plymouth a pre-contract. This semi-binding ceremony had hardly a favorable influence upon the morals of the times. Cotton Mather states: "There was maintained a Solemnity called a Contraction a little before the Consummation of a marriage was allowed of.
He heard her open and shut the front door.... He went to the open window. Would she look up? Surely that was the test of whether or not she was still the same the eternal. In the past, whatever had happened between them, she had never been able to resist that final peep, half to see whether he was there, half to send up a little tiny semi-binding glance of reconciliation.
To overcome these apparently insurmountable objections, a semi-binding pledge was made to not run more than ten or twelve miles per hour, and not more than thirty or forty miles per day, promises so obviously impossible of fulfillment on the part of any chauffeur that they were not binding in law.
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