Part 3

I regret to say that Aurelia paid no regard to the advice I gave her two weeks ago. In spite of all my efforts to persuade her to the contrary, she persisted in the hallucination that she was the first woman who had ever been torn away from distracted parents and led, a garlanded victim, to the matrimonial altar. I think she was disappointed that the heavens were not hung with white favors, and that deputations were not present from the various races of the globe, and that business was not suspended. The number of invitations was only limited by the capacity of the house. Everyone of the young ladies invited was a very dear friend, not to have invited whom would have given mortal offence, and sundered friendships, in many cases of several weeks' existence, without which life would have been a blank--Sahara without an oasis--Heaven without a star.

M. Arsene Houssaye, rash man, says that woman is the fourth theologic virtue and the eighth mortal sin. Upon this standard it is safe to say there was present a frightful amount of theologic virtue and mortal sin. I am sure of the latter fact.

The hour for the ceremony had been appointed at 6 P.M. Deeply impressed as was Aurelia with the idea that Columbus, discovering the New World; Galileo, fixing the motion of the earth round the sun; Newton, discovering the laws of gravitation, and Harvey, finding the circulation of the blood--were but every-day common-places compared with this event,--she had, nevertheless, found it impossible to convince the Directors of the Michigan Central Railroad of that fact. The result was that trains ran at the usual hour, and would not wait, even one little minute, and it was vulgarly necessary, therefore, to have the wedding promptly at six.

After the wedding was over, I invited old Blobbs up to my den to smoke, and we compared notes on this occasion, and mutually arrived at this result: That the good old-fashioned custom of a large family wedding, celebrated in hospitable style, followed up with wit, sociality, games, and a dance, the guests departing at a seasonable time, well lined with capon and punch, trusting to Providence and instinct that the young couple would find their way through the night, somehow, to the breakfast table the next morning, the bride dressed in the rosiest of blushes, and the groom very plucky and defiant, each commencing the race in life from the starting point of home, was much more sensible than this modern custom of gathering together all their dear friends, hurrying through the ceremony, and then running off a thousand miles, as if the couple had done something they were ashamed of.

And then we compared the comfort of home with a sleeping car: your own snugly furnished and beautifully adorned room, cosy, quiet, dreamy and mysterious, with the vulgar, rattling, smoking, baby-crying, enjoyed-in-common, dirty-counterpaned, cindery, head-smashing, waked-up-every-hour bunks of the sleeping car; the breakfast of cream and honey and strawberries, fragrant Mocha and snowy rolls, with the dirt, dust, cinders, smoke, tough beefsteaks and mahogany coffee of a sleeping car.

"_De gustibus non est disputandum_," said I.

"Ditto," said Blobbs.

From early morn until dewy eve, the dressmakers, mantau-makers, milliners, hair-dressers and chambermaids had been laboring on Aurelia. They modelled her, shaped her, powdered her, painted her, twisted her, pulled her, laced her, unlaced her, fixed her, took her to pieces and put her together again, behind carefully locked doors, while that poor devil Peplum, in a seven-by-nine room, with a two-by-three looking glass, two brushes and a comb, went at himself with fear and trembling, and although he was more lavish than ever of Macassar and Day & Martin, and split three pairs of kids and looked very red in the face, still he looked like himself, which is more than I can say of Aurelia.

In the meantime the guests were assembled, one hundred of whom were young ladies and all dear friends, looking very much like pinks in a parterre; fifty young gentlemen who looked as if they had something on their minds and were suspicious of the integrity of their cravats--(I know of nothing more terrible than to be in the company of very dear friends when you have a suspicion of the integrity of your outer man); a handful of old people who resembled feathery dandelion-tufts in a field of red and white clover; and Rev. Fitz-Herbert Evelyn, the sweet young associate of old Dr. Homilectics, who does up the weddings, youthful funerals, evening meetings, and morning calls, is sound on lunch, convenient in doctrine, and orthodox in raiment. For a set sermon on the rationalistic errors in Transubstantiation, the old doctor can beat him out of sight, but he has given up weddings as he is no longer sweet, and has been known to have talked common sense on such occasions, which is as much out of place as honesty in a Legislature. Consequently, the young ladies prefer the sweet, young Fitz-Herbert, who would sleep uneasily should he find a rose leaf under him edge upward, who rushes through the ceremony daintily, with the tips of his fingers, and after having tied the young lambs together with a thread, cooly dares anybody to put them asunder.

When the bridal couple entered the room, they immediately became the foci of three hundred or more eyes. They had scarcely got into position, when one hundred noses were elevated just a trifle, from which I judged that Aurelia, although fearfully and wonderfully made, was not altogether a success to her dear young friends. One hundred upper lips curled up, and fifty elbows of dear friends nudged in concert the corsets of fifty other dear friends, at what I afterwards found to be a spot upon her veil, left by one of the bridesmaids who was addicted to chewing spruce gum.

Aurelia commenced to look interesting, and, to my horror, so did young Peplum, and they succeeded admirably in looking like a young man and a young woman detected in the act of stealing green apples from a corner grocery. Sweet Mr. Evelyn stepped up, and after running his hand through his raven hair and passing it over his marble brow once or twice, thereby setting off to more advantage that amethyst ring which Blanche Jessamine gave him at the last meeting of the Young Ladies' Aid Society, he commenced looking very saintly and talking very sweetly.

After the customary promises, Fitz-Herbert began a beautiful exordium, feelingly alluding to the journey of life; touching upon the launching of the craft; alluding to calm seas; solemnly describing the mutual partnership of joys and sorrows; mentioning cups of bliss, sprinkling roses and boldly deprecating thorns. And when he said, in a solemn but sweet tone of voice: "My dear young friends, you are about to enter upon a pathway," etc., all the dear friends were visibly affected. One hundred lace handkerchiefs went up to two hundred eyes. The old maid who goes to all the weddings and funerals for lachrymal purposes went off like a waterspout. As she afterwards told me it did her a power of good, and that she hadn't enjoyed the blessing of tears so much since Podgers died.

(Podgers was a distant relative of her's on her mother's side, and was so confused at the time of his decease, that he forgot to mention her in his will.)

Mrs. Carbuncle, the woman in red hair and blue Thibet, who went to see Booth in Othello, because she doted on the Irish drama, had her child with her, who had served his purpose thus far in supplying some of the rash young fellows present with significant jokes. The child, seeing all the rest of the company in a lachrymose state, also lifted up his voice and wept out of sympathy. Mrs. Carbuncle's efforts to quiet him only made matters worse, and the youthful Carbuncle, kicking and weeping, was carried off in disgrace to an upper chamber, where, for half an hour afterwards, he manifested his poignant grief, by refusing to be comforted, and bumping the back of his head against a cottage bedstead.

Sweet Fitz-Herbert, who has a gift at weddings, but a keen appreciation of fees, was very brief in his ceremony, much to young Boosey's delight, who was dying to get at the supper table, around which Biddy was hovering in transports of delight like a bee round a hollyhock, being engaged at the same time in an internecine war with some men and brethren who had invaded her domains, in which war she was assisted by all the Biddies of the neighborhood, whom she had smuggled in by the back entrance to see the tables.

The ceremony having been concluded, congratulations were in order, when Mrs. Flamingo burst in, in a state of perspiration and general _deshabille_. For being just two minutes late, and for sleeping over on important occasions, that woman is a prodigy. In the natural history of society, she is the Great American Snail. If she ever dies, she will have to change her present habits, and in any event will sleep over when Gabriel blows his trumpet. If she had lived in the days of Noah, she would have been drowned within hailing distance of the ark. She is the woman who always comes late at the concerts and has to be waked by the door-keeper when he puts out the lights, and is always vigorous in pursuit of the last car of a railroad train.

It is hardly necessary for me to describe the wedding supper: the cakes, crowned with sugar cherubs straddling white roses and chasing golden butterflies among silver leaves; sugar Cupids, hovering on the brink of an ocean of Charlotte Russe; the huge pyramid of small syllabubs, which a man and brother, losing his presence of mind in waiting upon young Boosey, upset in all directions; the saucer of ice cream which another man, etc., upset upon Mrs. Carbuncle's head; the Heidseck which ruined Celeste's silk; the customary sentiment of sweet Fitz-Herbert, which I give entire: "Our dear young friends, who this night enter the pathway of life: May their cup of bliss always be full and their journey strewn with roses without a thorn. And if we never meet here, may we meet hereafter where they neither marry nor are given in marriage." Greatest of all, need I describe how Boosey and the crying old maid commenced at one end of the table and ate and drank through to the other without a single skip, or how Boosey retired from the fray, confused in his mind and uncertain in his legs, after proposing as a sentiment: "Here's to Peplum and Mrs. Peplum--j-j-jolly good fe-fe-fe-fellows. Dr-dr-dr-drink hearty."

The most astonishing event of the evening was the utter indifference of the hackman, who took the bride and Mr. Peplum to the depot. He was not aware of the importance of the event, and even dared to growl up to the fifth trunk, and swear in a low tone of voice at the sixth and last--the four-story Saratoga, and in a satirical tone of voice asked if he should drive to the freight depot.

That wretched man knew not that he carried the first woman ever married.

The guests finally departed--Mr. and Mrs. Peplum to the uncertainties of the sleeping car; sweet Fitz-Herbert leaving a Night-Blooming Cereus odor of sanctity behind him; the dear young friends; the old dandelion tops; the old maid still weeping; the disgraced child; Boosey on his winding way; and Mrs. Flamingo, who was found asleep near the ruins of the supper table, when Biddy was putting out the lights.

And I went to my den and lit my pipe and looked out of the window. The moon was still shining. The stars winked at me. A romantic young man was practising "Oft in the Stilly Night" on a cracked trumpet. Terrence and Bridget were sitting up at the next gate. The wind blew. The leaves rustled. My pipe glowed. The world revolved. I existed. And yet Aurelia had been married that very night.

If I have said little about Mr. Peplum, it is because Mr. Peplum seemed to have very little to do with it.

July 6, 1867.

_MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY._

Are you a base-ballist? If not, take my word and retire from the world.

You are a nullity, a nothing, a 0.

The cholera of 1866 is among us, but it has assumed the base-ball type. It is malignant, zymotic and infectious. Its results are not so fatal as last year, and manifest themselves in the shape of disjointed fingers, lame legs, discolored noses, and walking sticks.

The disease is prevalent among all classes. Editors, actors, aldermen, clerks, lumbermen, commission men, butchers, book-sellers, doctors and undertakers have it, and many of them have it bad.

Even the tailors tried to make up a club, but as they found it took eighty-one men to make up a nine they gave it up.

The only class not yet represented is the clerical.

More's the pity.

They would derive many advantages from the game. You see they would learn the value of the short stop. That is an important point on warm Sundays. They would also learn to hit hard. There are lots of old sinners who need to be hit that way. This continual pelting away with little theological pop-guns at old sinners whose epidermis is as thick as an elephant's, is of no consequence whatever. The shot rattle off like hailstones from a roof. They must learn to hit hard--hit so it will hurt--hit right between the eyes--fetch their man down, and rather than take such another theological bombshell, he will reconstruct.

There isn't a minister in this city who wouldn't preach better next Sunday for a square game of base-ball. This Christianity of the soft, flaccid, womanish, alabaster, die-away muscle kind, is pretty, but it isn't worth a cent in a stand-up fight with the Devil.

The Devil is not only a hard hitter with the bat, but he is a quick fielder, and he will pick a soul right off the bat of one of these soft muscle men while S. M. is wasting his strength on the air. He has another advantage over our clergymen. Most of them are confined to one base. The Devil plays on all the bases at once, and he can take the hottest kind of a ball without winking. Our ministers ought to get so they can do the same thing.

Melancthon was one of the soft muscle kind. He was gentle, sweet, amiable, gracious, and all that, but if he had been compelled to carry the Reformation on his shoulders, he never would have left his home base. While old Luther, a man of iron muscle, a hard hitter and a hard talker, who keeled the Devil over with his inkstand, and kicked Popes and Popes' theses, bulls and fulmina to the winds, made home runs every time, and left a clean score for the Reformation.

A great many of our ministers have bones--some, rather dry bones--nerves, sinews and muscles, just as an infant has, but they want development. They need blood which goes bounding through the veins and arteries, and tingles to the finger tips. Their sinews must stiffen up, their nerves toughen and their muscles harden. This process can be obtained by base-ball. It will settle their stomachs and livers, and when these are settled, their brains will be clear. They won't have to travel to cure the bronchitis, and won't be so peevish over good sister Thompson, who needs a great deal of consolation, owing to her nervous system.

Now, I would like to see two ministerial nines in the field. Robert Collyer at the bat would be a splendid hitter, and would send the Liberal ball hot to Brother Hatfield, on the short stop, and I would stake all my money that he couldn't make it so hot that Brother H. wouldn't stop it. These two clergymen wouldn't need to practice much, because they represent my idea of muscular Christians. Whenever they hit, they hit hard, and I pity the soft-muscled parson that gets into a controversy with either of them. But then they would get all the rest of the nines into good trim and harden up the muscles of Dr. Ryder and Robert Laird Collier, Father Butler, Dr. Patton, and Revs. Everts and Patterson, and the rest. To be sure, the clerical fingers would sting, and the clerical legs would be stiff, and the clerical backs would ache for a few days, but it would take all the headaches and dizziness, and dyspepsia and liver complaints, and heartburns out of the system. Their inner men would be refreshed, and their outer men regenerated, and they would go into their pulpits with firmer step, and their sermons would be full of blood and muscle, and they would kick the old musty tomes on one side and preach right out of their consciousness and hearts, man to man, and all would get their salaries increased and a month's vacation to go to the seaside.

I tell you, my brethren, in this city of Chicago, the Devil is getting the upper hand, and you must go in on your muscle. Get your backs up. Stiffen your muscles and then hit like a sledge-hammer. If old Croesus, in your congregation, is a whiskey-seller, don't be afraid of him. Hit him on the head so it will hurt. If Free-on-Board is a professional grain gambler, hit him on the head. If old Skinflint acts dirtily with his tenants, tell him he is a miserable old devil. Don't be afraid of him. He will like you all the better for it. If he won't get down on his knees by fair talking, take hold of his coat-collar and put him upon his knees.

August 17, 1869.

_THE BOSTON GIRL._

The Boston girl, necessarily, was born in Boston. Necessarily, also, her ancestors, and she can trace back her lineage to that Thankful Osgood, who came over in 1640, and owned the cow that laid out the streets of Boston. The wolf that suckled Romulus was held in no more respect by the Latins than is the bronzed image of that cow, cast by Mr. Ball, the sculptor, upon a commission from her father, a solid man, who lives on Beacon street, in a brown stone front with two "bow" windows and a brass knocker.

The ambition of every Boston girl is to live in a brown stone front with two "bow" windows and a brass knocker, before she dies. Having accomplished that, and attended a course of medical lectures, she is ready to depart in peace, for after that, all is vanity.

There are three episodes in the life of every Boston girl, viz., the Frog Pond, the Natural History Rooms, and the Fraternity Lectures. In her infancy, if so majestic a creature ever had an infancy, she sailed small boats on the Frog Pond, and was several times rescued from drowning in its depths, by the same policeman, who to-day wanders along its stone coping, watching the reflection of his star in the water, as he did a quarter of a century ago. She visits the pond daily on her way to the Natural History Rooms, where she inspects with diurnal increase of solicitude the bones of the megatherium and the nondescript foeti of human and animal births, preserved in Boston bottles, filled with Boston spirits.

But the series of Fraternity Lectures is the great fact of the Boston girl's life. She dotes on Phillips, idolizes Weiss' social problems, goes into a fine frenzy over Emerson's transcendentalism, and worships Gail Hamilton and her airy nothings.

The Boston girl is of medium height, with a pale, intellectual face, light hair, blue eyes, wears eye-glasses, squints a little, rather _deshabille_ in dress, slight traces of ink on her second finger, blue as to her hose and large as to her feet. Of physical beauty she is no boaster, but of intellectual she is the paragon of animals. Gather a dandelion by the roadside, she will only recognize it as _Leontodon taraxacum_, and discourse to you learnedly of fructification by winged seeds. She will describe to you the relative voicings of the organs of Boston and the size of the stops in the Big one. She will analyze the difference in Beethoven's and Mendelssohn's treatment of an _allegro con moto_. She will learnedly point out to you the theological differences in the conservative and radical schools of Unitarianism, and she has her views on the rights of woman, including her sphere and mission. But I doubt whether the beauty of the flower, the essence of music, the sublimity of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, or the inspiration of theology, ever find their way into her science-laden skull, or whether her spectacled eyes ever see the way to the core of nature and art.

The Boston girl is a shell. She never ripens into a matured flesh and blood woman. She is cold, hard, dry and juiceless. Gail Hamilton is a type of the Boston girl at maturity. Abby Kelly Foster was a type of the Boston girl gone to seed. If Gail Hamilton lives as long as did Abby, she will carry a blue cotton umbrella, wear a Lowell calico, and make speeches on the wrongs of woman and the abuses of the Tyrant Man. If the Boston girl ever marries, she gives birth to a dictionary, or to a melancholy young intellect, who is fed exclusively on vegetables, at the age of six has mastered logarithms and zoology, is well up in the carboniferous and fossiliferous periods, falls into the Frog Pond a few times, dies when he is eight years of age, and sleeps beneath a learned epitaph and the _Leontodon taraxacum_.

September 7, 1867.

_THE DEAD._

Has a live man any rights which a dead man is bound to respect?

I ask this question with due consideration for the feelings of a dead man. I know it is an unpleasant thing to be a dead man. There are no corner-lots, no operas, no new novels, no latest styles, no duck-shooting, no sensations on the other bank of the Styx.

I never appreciated that poet who would not live always. I would.

Neither that other poet who wanted to die in the summer time. I am so little particular about the time, as to prefer not to die at any time.

Neither those gushing young women who pine for a willow tree, with a nightingale "into it," at the headboard, and trim daisies at the foot-board.

My sepulchro-botanical yearnings are overpowered by a very strong friendship for this superb old world.

Which reminds me to again ask the question: Has a live man any rights which a dead man is bound to respect?

And this suggests, first, Tombstones.

I am prepared to make a wager with any responsible party that in a match for the championship of lying, a tombstone would beat Ananias with Sapphira thrown in, and will give odds. _Hic jacet_ is literally true, and about the only true thing the majority of tombstones say. If the ghosts of the late deceased--who are always eminent--are permitted to stroll about cemeteries at their leisure, their astonishment at reading their epitaphs must be of the most supernatural character.

A miser, whose small soul in his earthly life could not have been found with a microscope, is astonished to discover, that he was a liberal-hearted man and a benefactor, with distant allusions to the possibility of his having been an angel in disguise.

A man who went through the world without the responsibility of a single moral principle under his vest, suddenly finds that he was possessed of all the cardinal virtues, and is written down on cool marble as an exemplar for the rising generation.

A woman who, in the earthly tabernacle, was the lingual scourge of her neighborhood, discovers that she was the loveliest of her sex, and is now an angel with the handsomest wings to be found in the whole ornithological tribe of the upper air.

A man whose highest ambition was to go through life quietly, doing as much good as he could for his fellows, and to go out of life like a gentleman, finds himself kicking up posthumous dust under a huge monument of the most elaborate description, gaudy with gilding, wreaths, chaplets, urns, torches and flowers.

Considering the number of nuisances among the living, the quantity of angels and cherubs in every graveyard is appalling, and it becomes a question worthy of consideration by the Academy of Sciences--the ultimate destination of the sinners and poor devils. All known grave yards are devoted exclusively to saints. In what _ignota terra_ rest the bones of the sinners?