Book Excerpt VI

In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom.  Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom, naked, to the bride.  We, indeed, both laughed at this, and condemned it as very indecent.  But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations…

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