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ALL FUSS AND FEATHERS

Wedding Ceremonies Which Are Almost Grostesque Because of Their Flummery.

The Simple, Quiet Wedding Seems to Be Condisdered 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 following dispatch appeared in the papers last week:

"Edward Howard, son of ex-County Recorder Howard, and Miss Eita 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 married at some place out of town. It is believed they were married by a squire at Niles, Mich. The act of the young couple created a great sensation. They were to have been at home May 1 at Pttisburg, Kaa."

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 have accused the beautiful Miles Garceau of incnsideration, lil-bredding, selfishness and several other bad qualities. No doubt a great many persons thought it unbecoming; the priest was probably much pained at such intemperance of action and-they young men laughed to themselves and symathized. For as a general proposition, 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 bride. Moreover, man never became addicited to the wedding of civilization. He may submit to it. But he does not like it. It not only bothers and mortifies him, but it actually offends something fine in his nature. He does not like to have the weeks which precede marriage given up to a great extent to the overseeing of flummeries. Only a very few men have I known who desired any display at their weddings. These were all young men who were making an xcusable but not very picturesque effort 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 woman. 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 background. I shall never froget 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 chracter, who was nobly and devotedly attached to her. Their love was of the lofty type and I doubt if trifling words of any sort passed between them during their courthsip. Now I fully expected the wedding to be the climax of all this and looked ot see this ceremony ideally conducted. But what was my amazement to see this woman suddenly drop all her dignity, all her beautiful love-making, and become a flurried, nervous creature, flying from milliner to dressmaker, rejecting twenty samples for a gown to telegraph for more bunches of samples, weeping over bonnets which she thought did not become her, and quareling with dressmakers over the fit of her gowns! It was as if Ariel on being released from the cloven pine tree whould have asked if she could have pancakes fro breakfast.

The wedding was stupid. It was an anti-climaz. She thought all during the ceremony that the back of her dress did not fit.he had a voil on his neck, and one of the maids tipped a tray full of water glasses over the heads of the guests-that was really the only enlivening and perfectly natural thing about the occasion. The Ideal of love sat weeping somewhere on the back stairs, and the and the milliners and dressmakers were with us in our thougths and even I believe in our prayers. I am almost sure the bride peayed that no one would norice the wrinkle under the arms of her gray-blue velvet gown. I have forgotten the ecpect she mentioned it accureately in the payer.

The Young Lochinvar sort of wedding is really the thing that seems to have most madness and delight in it-or the sort that sweet Madeline and Prophre indulged in. You remember-but these are the lines"

They golide, like Phantoms, int the wide ahll@

Like Phantoms to the iron porch they glide.

Were lay the porter, in uneasy sprawl,

With a huge empty flagon by his side:

The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,

But his sagaclous eye and immate owns:

By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:

The chains lie silent on the footowrn stones:

The key ruens, and the door upon its hingers groans.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the stom.

That night the baron deampt of many a was.

And all his warrior guests, with shade and from

Of witch, and demon, and large coffin forms

Were long be-nigthmared. Angles the old

Died paisy-twitched, with meager face deform;

The Beadsman, after thousand saved told For eye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

In one of his books Hamlin Garland. In his regard for the spirit of things and his disregard for form, chanced to neglect to mention the circumstances of the wedding ceremony of two of his lovers, merely speaking of them as being unitedin their lives. The prines and prisma readers wrote frantically to the Arena to inquire if a wedding ceremony was really perfromed. They had to know before they could approve of the story. Garland aplogized. He said the ceremony had been perfromed. He had not supposed that his characters seemed so grotesque that anyone would suspect them of disregarding a wise law, but he had considered a ten minute ceremony of too little consequence. In view of the purpose and passion which untied hi lovers, to consider it worthy of mention. 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 fee and the kind of flowers the bride carried-but I am not sure.

There used to be a tradition that runaway marriages did not turn out well. So many marraiges turn out lil, 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 from her elation of spirit, and her semse of power and love, the strengths to walk, which she has not posses for hears. Her happy heart healed her weary body. William Henry Stoddard and Elizabeth Stoddard, both of them poets,, fled together and tell of it now, even when their heads are white, with enthusiasm.

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

The one great objection to runaway wedding is that it may bring much

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

Elia W. Peattie.

ALL FUSS AND FEATHERS

Wedding Ceremonies Which Are Almost Grostesque Because of Their Flummery.

The Simple, Quiet Wedding Seems to Be Condisdered Very Largely a Thing to Be Ashamed Of.

Mrs. Peattie Writes of the Marriage Rites Which Are Like a Brass Band and a Circus.