“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: 

“I crave this boon, this errand by the way: 
Commend me to the man more lov’d than life,
Show him the sorrows of his widow’d wife,

* * * * *

“My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears,
And, if he love, how can he there abide?”

Again, we note the following: 

“If ever two were one, then surely we;
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can."[75]

    “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
    Or all the riches that the East doth hold,
    My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
    Nor aught but love from thee give recompense. 
    My love is such I can no way repay;
    The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray,
    Then while we live in love let’s persevere,
    That when we live no more we may live ever.”

The letters of Abigail Adams to her husband might be offered as further evidence of the affectionate relationships existing between man and wife in colonial days.  Our text books on history so often leave the impression that the fear of God utterly prevented the colonial home from being a place of confident love; but it is possible that the social restraints imposed by the church outside the home reacted in such a manner as to compel men and women to express more fervently the affections otherwise repressed.  When we read such lines as the following in Mrs. Adams’ correspondence, we may conjecture that the years of necessary separation from her husband during the Revolutionary days, must have meant as much of longing and pain as a similar separation would mean to a modern wife: