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.
117
A WORD WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W. Peattie.)
Many packages of excellent, clean and warm baby clothing have been sent to this office for distribution in Hayes county, and have been forwarded to Mrs. Bell Dye, the self-appointed nurse in that drouth stricken community, where the crop of humans seem in such disproportion to the crop of edibles if anything further is sent in may be forwarded direct to Pallsade, if it be an express package, or to Hayes Center, if it be a letter, addressed to Mrs. Dye Will the many women who responded to this call for help for our western neighbors except my thanks for this prompt and cordial co-operation? One has a growing sense of confidence in the unity of Omaha women. Every year there is more concert of action, and consequently more opportunity of work of the altruistic sort.
The bill for raising the age of consent was presented to the senate in an absurd and mutilated condition, but one of the legislators who has the passage of the bill much as hear sends assurance that this was an error which will be remedied and that the sympathy of both houses is with the bill It is to be hoped he is correct The manner in which the bill appeared reflected poorly upon the earnestness and good judgment of the men who offered the amendments. If the bill is defeated let it be by a direct vote in a dignified manner. It is not the sort of measure that good men will trifle with, or vent their legislative jests upon.
The treatment which the cigarette bill has received has been shameful. As it now stands it prohibits the manufacture on sale of cigarette paper in this state. All of which means that the cigarette manufacturers and dealers have profited by the measure, and, in the event of the passage of the bill, will have a monopoly in the making of cigarettes-which is, possibly, just what the legislator who proposed the measure intended from the first. The bill is an impossible one. Even as framed in the beginning it offered an unjustifiable interference with personal rights, and proposed a measure which could never be enforced and which would add to the disrespect for law which is becoming an ever-increasing sentiment as the outcome of the creation of puerile laws. But even so, there was a hope that the bill had been honestly proposed. This seems not, however to have been the case It was a polite way of holding up the manufacturers of and dealers in cigarettes, and force them to divide their profits. It is another instance of that misuse of misrepresentation which is forcing patriotic Americans to ask the question if republican governments may not degenerate into republican mobs. For it is easily possible for the men of a republic to degrade their autonomy into a government in which the outward form of order shall be preserved, but in which the passions of men shall run riot, knowing no master save that of will, using party as a bludgeon, office and representation as opportunities for plundering those who ignorantly or craftily elect them.
But enough of all this It is the Sabbath. To even the scoffer something of test and sweetness comes with the day. The streets are almost silent. The stores and shops are closed. The people pass and repass each other as they walk toward their different house of worship One cannot help wishing they were all going the same way. Yet it is possible that liberty of conscience, like liberty of government, must be sustained by jealousy and not by confidence. A long, long day the Sabbath, full of quiet hours-the home seeming dearer than on other days the books looking more inviting, the wearing tasks put out of sight and mind. A blessed institution, looked at from any point of view is the Christian Sabbath. For the peace of it fails on falls on the weary mind the rest pervades the tired body, and over the[?] it comes a calm, if not a joy.
118
A WORD WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W. Peattie)
The grand jury has found the dimensions of the county jail too small to acrecommends that the portion of the jail owners confined within its walls. It has found that the women are confuned in the basement, which is poorly ventilated, damp, dark and unhealthy. It recommend that the portion of the jail now occupied by the deputy sheriff or jailer be converted into rooms for the women and that a matron be appointed. Unless the expense and trouble of convening a grand jury are to stand for so much waste, the reccommendations of this body should be respected and acted upon. The women of this city-who pay no contemptible amount of faces of this corporation-desire to have a motion placed in charge of those miserable women They want the women prisoners to have more room, places where they can have stationary beds and not as now, to be confined in what are practically the store rooms of the jail , along with piles of stuff of various sorts, in rooms in which the sun can shine but a small part of the rooms are now, black and white base and suspected, young and old but be huddled together. An insane woman, no matter how respectable or refined, or how conscious of her state, would be put in with the most debased of her sex. A woman under suspicion, who migh be innocent, would suffer the same indignity And it goes without saying that there is seldom or never a time when some disgusting offenders are not in this prison house. A matron is needed not only to minister to the sick the insane and the young, but to restrain the vicious and to win them if possible, to a better mental condition There is no longer any argument against this There is no use in saying it cannot be done. For it has been done over and over again by Mrs Cummings at the city jail. There are happy little homes in the city which have come into existence as the work of the matron of the city jail, who has saved women from their lower selves, reconciled them to the husbands, lovers or mothers that they have offended. There are slef-respecting girls working in kitchen and stones, who have become self respecting by means of the influences thrown around them by the excellent woman, and by the assistance she gave them in finding honest work. The law provides for a matron at the county jail. Let us have one more there
The grand jury also finds the rates charged for rent in the Ninth street district exorbiant and advises the extension of that distict. Does the grand jury advise other citizens to offend against the statues of this state in letting houses for immoral purposes? That is very singular advice to give. The grand jury might much more appropiately have advised the prosecution of all citizens who leased, rented or used the buildings for such purposes. That would have been in keeping with the law I could not as a woman for one moment approve of the persecution of any soman no matter how fallen- indeed the more miserable the woman the more to be pitied and protected and I do not therefore wish to go on record as approving of the cruel extortions levied against the women whose nofailous trade confines them to the unholy precincts near the river. But why they who are laow breakers, should be encouraged to continue in their work, or why other citizens should be tempted to aid and abet them in law breaking by having official approval of the extensions of precincts set aside for this illegal traffic, I do not know. The grand jury appeals to be encouraging and fostering that vice It must be said that there are times when this city can be more magnificently indifferent to law in the following of its own ideas of what is firing or permissible, than any other community excepting a mining district, with which one has acquaintace .The grand jury speaks also of abolishing the district referred to, This does not however, meant to abolish the evil by to relieve the evil does from all restraint.
Sixty persons are to be prosecuted at Berlin for lese majeste in speaking disresctfully of the emperor a song. The life of a book reviewer will be attended with difficuliteis if the emperor insists upon becoming an author.
119
A WORD WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W Peattie)
The courage, decision, effciency and system which the modern trained nurse exhibits are too well known to need comment The little white cap, the striped gown and the spotless apron have come to be the insignia of her comfortable office. Physicians depend upon her in the most hazardous operations, trusting to the deftness, rapidity, delicacy of perception--the almost clairvoyant sympathy- as they would not trust in one of their own sex. The endurance of these trained women is remarkable. They have added to the self-control that have been aquired by their training a devotion to duty which of a feminine type. An instance of the passion for self-immoiation that occasionally appears in woman was shown by Miss Minnie Baumer, a nurse at the Jennings Avenue hospital at Cleveland, which burned yesterday. When she found that her patients could not be moved from the burining building she refused to leave them, and was found dead by the bedside of an old man who was in her charge. Was the heroism superfluous? Perhaps so She benefited one by this consummate sacrifice But she satisfied her own sense of duty. She induilged herself in the luxury of martrydom, which, after all, may be a sort of vanity. But she attained her ideal, That, surely, is the best one can do. And she demonstrated what training for self-control can do. For it takes ore than moral courage to sit calmly down in a burning building at the post of duty and wait for death. It takes well-trained nerves, a masterful will and an indomitable physical courage.
The woman's department of the Cotton States and International exposition is one of the most important and interesting features of the fair. This branch of the work was organized early in the history of the exposition and has already attained large proportions. The women have more than marched the appropriation allowed from the general fund, and from the present outlook they will quadruple it before the year is out. The sourses of the fund are entertainments, bazars and a varity of enterprises, some of which are very unique character. The lastest and most notable of these is the Valentine Journal Mr W. H. Cubaniss, manager of the Atlanta Journal, generously offered to give the woman's department of the exposition the proceeds of the day's advertisements in the Journal if the women would edit. They promptly accepted, and the journal of February 10 will be made and edited entirely by women. Mrs Joseph Thompson, president of the womans board will be editor-in-chief. Mrs Loulie Gordon will be telegraph editor and Mrs W. H. Felton the brilliant wife of ex-Congressman Felton, will write articles on the tariff and finance. An elaborate variety of special matter and a score of the brightest young women in Atlanta have been assigned to report the courts the capitol, police headquarters and court, the railroads, the exposition and other departments The prospect is that the Valentine Journal will be brilliant number. and advertisements will be more numerous than ever.
The women will invite and Daughters of the the Revolution to meet in Atlanta next fall, and is expected that they will accept This would bring to Atlanta 1 3000 ladies prominent in their respective communities, and many of them women of national reputation.
By a recent vote of the board of women managers, it was decided to ask congress for a special appropriation to make the collection of woman's work exhibits a national one. Mrs William Dixon, Miss Loulie M Gordon and Mrs Sarah Grant Jackson were appointed a committee to bring this matter before congress.
The new moire sash ribbons come in all colors, daintily figured in Dresden patterns, or with vine of delicate flowers through the center.
Mrs Gladstone receives most of her husbands callers, and seeks to save him from the visitors actuated by curiosity, or who have some favor to ask.
Artificial flowers are developing some new varieties for decking spring bonnets, and the upretentious patato biosom is among the novelties.
Miss Crabtree, otherwise Lotta, the ever effervescent and perennial, is passing thw wunter in Cleopatra's land, and is much benefitied by her prolonged rest.
The craze for English open-work embroidery has attacked the ribbons, and some of the new varieties have a pattern of very open embroidery down the center.
120
A WORD WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W Peattie)
The courage, decision, effciency and system which the modern trained nurse exhibits are too well known to need comment The little white cap, the striped gown and the spotless apron have come to be the insignia of her comfortable office. Physicians depend upon her in the most hazardous operations, trusting to the deftness, rapidity, delicacy of perception--the almost clairvoyant sympathy- as they would not trust in one of their own sex. The endurance of these trained women is remarkable. They have added to the self-control that have been aquired by their training a devotion to duty which of a feminine type. An instance of the passion for self-immoiation that occasionally appears in woman was shown by Miss Minnie Baumer, a nurse at the Jennings Avenue hospital at Cleveland, which burned yesterday. When she found that her patients could not be moved from the burining building she refused to leave them, and was found dead by the bedside of an old man who was in her charge. Was the heroism superfluous? Perhaps so She benefited one by this consummate sacrifice But she satisfied her own sense of duty. She induilged herself in the luxury of martrydom, which, after all, may be a sort of vanity. But she attained her ideal, That, surely, is the best one can do. And she demonstrated what training for self-control can do. For it takes ore than moral courage to sit calmly down in a burning building at the post of duty and wait for death. It takes well-trained nerves, a masterful will and an indomitable physical courage.
The woman's department of the Cotton States and International exposition is one of the most important and interesting features of the fair. This branch of the work was organized early in the history of the exposition and has already attained large proportions. The women have more than marched the appropriation allowed from the general fund, and from the present outlook they will quadruple it before the year is out. The sourses of the fund are entertainments, bazars and a varity of enterprises, some of which are very unique character. The lastest and most notable of these is the Valentine Journal Mr W. H. Cubaniss, manager of the Atlanta Journal, generously offered to give the woman's department of the exposition the proceeds of the day's advertisements in the Journal if the women would edit. They promptly accepted, and the journal of February 10 will be made and edited entirely by women. Mrs Joseph Thompson, president of the womans board will be editor-in-chief. Mrs Loulie Gordon will be telegraph editor and Mrs W. H. Felton the brilliant wife of ex-Congressman Felton, will write articles on the tariff and finance. An elaborate variety of special matter and a score of the brightest young women in Atlanta have been assigned to report the courts the capitol, police headquarters and court, the railroads, the exposition and other departments The prospect is that the Valentine Journal will be brilliant number. and advertisements will be more numerous than ever.
The women will invite and Daughters of the the Revolution to meet in Atlanta next fall, and is expected that they will accept This would bring to Atlanta 1 3000 ladies prominent in their respective communities, and many of them women of national reputation.
By a recent vote of the board of women managers, it was decided to ask congress for a special appropriation to make the collection of woman's work exhibits a national one. Mrs William Dixon, Miss Loulie M Gordon and Mrs Sarah Grant Jackson were appointed a committee to bring this matter before congress.
The new moire sash ribbons come in all colors, daintily figured in Dresden patterns, or with vine of delicate flowers through the center.
Mrs Gladstone receives most of her husbands callers, and seeks to save him from the visitors actuated by curiosity, or who have some favor to ask.
Artificial flowers are developing some new varieties for decking spring bonnets, and the upretentious patato biosom is among the novelties.
Miss Crabtree, otherwise Lotta, the ever effervescent and perennial, is passing thw wunter in Cleopatra's land, and is much benefitied by her prolonged rest.
The craze for English open-work embroidery has attacked the ribbons, and some of the new varieties have a pattern of very open embroidery down the center.