116

ALL FUS AND FEATHERS

Wedding Ceremonies Which Are Almost Grostesque Because of Their Flummery.

The Somple, Quiet Wedding Seems to Be Considered Very Largely a Thing to Be Ashamed of.

Mrs. Peattie writes of the Marriage Rites Which Are like a Brass Band and a Circus.

The folloing dispatch appeared in the papers last week:

"Edward Howard son of ex-County Recorder Howard, and Miss Etta Garceau, one of the most beautiful young ladies of South Bend, were to have been married this morning in St. Patrick's church. At the appointed hour the church was filled with prominent society people, when the priest appeared and announced that no wedding would occur. It develops that the bride and groom-elect left the city last night and were marrie at some place out of town. It is believed they wree married by a squire at Niles, Mich. The act of the yong couples created a great sensation. They were to have been at home May 1 at Pittsburg, Kas."

Now, that strikes me as being one of the most interesting newspaper paragraphs I have read for many a week of yesterdays. Of course, the "prominent society people: must have been annoyed. They must accused the beautiful Miles Garceau of inconsideration, lil-breeding, selfishness and several other bad qualities. No doubt a great many personas thought it unbecoming; the priest was probably much pained at such intermperance of action and-the young men laugh to themselves and sypathized. For, as a general prpositionm it may be said that all men would like to run away to be married. Man has never entirely got over the love of capturing his bridge. Moreover, man never because addicted to the wedding of civiliation. He may submit to it. But he does not like it. It not only nother and mortifies him, but it actually offends something fine in his nature. He does not like to have the weeks which precede marriage given to a great extent to the overseeing of flummeries. Only a very few men ahve I known who desired any display at their weddings. These were all young men who were making an excusable but not very picturesque effor to rise in society, and to develop business. They each appeared to think that business would be assisted and social standing more or less assured by a large public wedding, at which there should be many people, many flowers, a variety of classical music, endless millinery, and, incidentally, a wedding ceremony.

There must be a bit of the nature of the squaw left in the civilized women, that she should so run to the decoration of herself at an hour when one would suppose that it would be natural for her to be consumed with thoughts which left material display far in the background. I shall never forget one personal experience in my life. I knew a lovely woman, with a fine and well-trained mind. She came in course of time, to select from many lovers a man of much firmness of character, who was nobly and devotedly attahed to her. Their love was the lofty type, and I passed between them during their courship. Now, I fully expected the wedding to be the climax of all this, and looked to see this ceremony ideally conducated. But what was my amazement to see this woman suddenly drop all her dignity, all her beautrifl love-making and become a flurried, nervous creature, flying from milliner to dressmaker, rejecting twenty sumples for a gown to telegraph for morebunches of samples, weeping over bonnets which she thought did not become her, and quarelling with dressmakers over the fit of her gowns! It was as if Ariel, on being relased from the cloven pine tree should have asked if she could have panckaes for breakfast.

The wedding was stupid. It was an anti-climax. She thought all during the ceremony that the back of her dress did not fit. he had a boil on his neck, and one of the maids tipped a tray full of water glasses over the heads of the quests-that was really the only enlivening and perfectly natural ting about hte occasion. The Ideal of love say sat weeping somehwere on the back stairs, and the millners and dressmakers were with u sin our thoughts and even I believe in our prayers. I am almost sure the bride prayed that no one would notice the wrinkle under the arms of her gray-blue velvet gown. I have forgotten the exact tint of the dress, or what it was called, but I expect she mentioned it accurately in the prayer.

They yong Lochinvar sort of wedding is really the thing that I seems to have most madness and delight In it-or the sort that sweet Madeline and Porphyra induldged in. You remember-but these are the lines:

They gilde, like phantoms, into the wide hail!

LIke phantoms to the iron porch they glide.

Where lay the porier, in uneay spawl,

With a huge empty flagon by his pride:
The wakeful Boodhound rose, and schook his hide.

But this sagacious eye and immate owns: By one, and one, the bolts full essay slide: The chisn lie silent on the foot worn stines; The key turns and the door upon its hinge groans.

And they were gone: say ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the baron dreampt of many a wor.

And all his warrior guests, with shade and form

Of which and demon, and large coffin worms

Were long be-nightmared. Angles the old

Died palsy-twiched, with meager face defrom:

The beadman after thousand aves told For eye unsought for slept among his seens cold.

In one of his books Hamin Garland, In his regard for the spirit of things and disregard for form chanced to neglect to mention the circumstances of the wedding ceremony of two of his lovers, merely speaking of htem as being untied in their lives. The prunes and prisms readers wrote frantically to the Arena to inquire if a wedding ceremony was really performed. They had to know before they could approve of the story. Farland apologized. He said the ceremony had been performed. He had not supposed that his charactrs seemd so grotesque that anyone would suspect them of disregarding a wise law, but he had considered a ten minute ceremony of too little conswquences in view of the purpose and passion which untied his lovers to consider It watchy of meation. His readers still could not understand. They requested him to mention the fact of the ceremony when he published the novel in book form. And he did, It may be that he also mentioned the amount of the feeand the kind of flowers the bride carrie-but I am not sure.

There used ot be a tradition that runaway marriage did not turn out well. So many marriages turn out well. So many marriages turn out ill, that it would probably be fair to suspect marriages of any sort of not being absolute perfection. But there are many runaway marriages which are ideal. The Brownings fled together-Mrs. Browning gathering form her elation of spirit, and her sense of power and love, the strength to walk which she had not possessed for years. Her happy heart healed her weary body. William Henry Stoddard and Elizabeth Stoddard, both of them poets, fled togehter and tell of it now, even when their heads are white, with enthusiasm

As for Gretna Green, ballad and story had made it famous and dear.

The one great objection to a runway wedding is that it may bring much anxiety to some one who is deserving of every consideration. A mother wishes to see her daughter decorously netrothed and marriedm with her proper trousseau packed in new trunks and a stock of table clothes and drawn work dolleys laid away in proper piles tied with blue ribbons. Respectability becomes a passion with the happy matron and mother. She is not if not seemly. And it really is a shame to view her loving hear. That is the head and front of the offending in matters similar ot the historic Lochinvar incident. But the young couple at South Bend must have looked more or less after the dolleys and all other evidences of respectability. Prpbably they ineant to be proper up to the last moment. The evening before their marriage it was only natural they should be together. They went walking, of course-one talks much better under the stars, than by gaslight.

"Tomorrow," he probably said, "I ought to be the happiest man alive, and I would be [?] were not for that dreadful wedding in the church. Do you think there will be many there?"

"the church will be crowded," she very likely replied "to the doors, They will talk about my veil. They will say you looked awkward-if they notice you at all. I shall carry a white prayer book in my hand look as stiff and uninteresting as a portrait of a lady on tho waits of a picture show, I shall forget not think of you at all, I shall forget all about loving you, and wonder if the bridesmaids will remember how to stand, and if you have got the ring in the words of the marriage, and be very happy remebering that after this I can always stay with you and be your wife, But I shall be forced to notice that papa tripped over mama's train when he gave me away, and that the girls were giggling in the front row, and Aunt Bessie's nose was getting red from weeping."

"Thats just it!" he probably cried, enthusiasitcally. "And then we will have to be congraduated by hundreds of people whose names we can hardly remember, and you will be kissed by people who are not fit to touch the hem of your garments, and we will eat-we who have ment they know not of-and hours and hours will pass, with people around crying and nothering, when we ought to be at our best-when life ought to take on its highest meaning. But in that chatter we shall only be able to think about the refreshments."

Then there may have been a long, long silence. Then, perhaps, he kissed her. And it is possible that that was also long-long! Then he said-at least, maybe, he said:

"why not?"
"Anything you say-anywhere with you!" is perhaps what she replies,

And so it was done-and society was cheated of a pagent, the caterer had his horrid little paper dishes of sweet breads left on his hands, the mother grieved honestly, society whispered and marveled, not understanding and young men laughed.

ELIA W. PEATTIE.