The colonists in their practical manner had an excellent device for speeding along courtship and saving firework at the same time. The damsel and box suitor, when the winter winds blew off simply popped into bed, fully clothed lowered a small wooden fence between them and pulled the covers high ground their necks. This was called "bunding" and it is this quaint practice that provides the central theme for "The Pursuit of Happiness," playing at the Metropolitan theatre this week.

Francis Lederer and Joan Bennett by the leading bundlers in this intelligent sparkling comedy that pokes fun at No England's blue laws of Revolutionary days. Leaderer, a violin-playing Hessics soldier deserts the English forces and turns up in Miss Bennett's barn milking a cow. He is taken a prisoner of war, but this hinders him very little first gazing soulfully into Jean's eyes or from playing the piano and singing romantic songs to her, or indeed from leaving the confinement one wintry night and bundling with her in the parlor.

But the excellence of the picture comes not from it's story. It is Mr. Leherer's delightful bundling techniques, the numerous rique remarks and situations Charles Ruggles' philosophical grumbling that sends the audience chuckling and wheezing. Mr Ruggles plays the comfort-loving father who cares little for church-going, flag waving or his wife's constant admonitions and advice. Mary Boland is given little opportunity to be her usual hysterical self, but she carries off the part of the dominating mother with comical sterness while Mr. Ruggles is stealing most of their scenes.