Chapter 67

THE WEDDING.

Said my friend:

There's to be a grand wedding, you know, With no end to the fuss and parade, With sixteen fair bridesmaids to stand in a row, With sixteen young groomsmen to help out the show, One to stand by the side of each maid.

Then there's a reception to be very fine, With all sorts of magnificent things, With silver to glitter and mirrors to shine, With tropical fruit and famous old wine, With odorous flowers and music divine, Drawn forth from melodious strings.

In the minds of many girls the wedding means only this public show, the display of elegant toilets, the reception of costly gifts; and the preparation of marriage means too often merely the making of an elegant _trousseau_. People generally do not ask concerning the fitness of the young people to enter on the solemn duties of life--do not ask how well they have been instructed concerning that which is before them; but the questions are all about clothes and gifts and ceremonials. No wonder, then, that the thought of the young woman centers on these things, to the exclusion of nearly all else; indeed, it may be to the detriment of health and the lessening of true happiness. The prospective husband finds his _fiancee_ so absorbed in sewing, shopping and interviews with dressmakers that she has few moments to give to him, and these few occupied more with the thought of gowns and personal adornments than with ideals of wedded happiness.

Perhaps she even excuses herself for lessening the number of his visits on the plea that very soon now she will be all his, and so he is left to spend his last days of bachelorhood in loneliness, and made to feel that raiment is more than love. Worse still, it may be that on the wedding-day he takes to his heart a bride so wearied, so nervously exhausted by the preparations of the _trousseau_ that she is at least temporarily an invalid. I have known more than one bride so worn out by the preparation for her wedding that instead of bringing brightness, joy and beauty into the new life, she brought illness, anxiety and care, and made demands at once upon the patience and service of the husband, who had a right to expect health and vigor and a power to enjoy.

I knew a sensible girl who said months before her marriage, "I am not going to bring to my new life a remnant of health, a shattered nervous system and a tattered temper," and she kept her word. Her sewing was done by degrees, and was all out of the way weeks before the wedding. Shopping and dressmaking were never allowed to interfere with the walks and drives, the chats and moonlight strolls. "We shall not be able to repeat this experience," she wisely said, and so her lover found her ever ready to give him her society and her thought. Her _trousseau_ was not elaborate, her wedding-dress was simple, but in it she shone like a flower of the morning, full of brightness and health and joy.

She was wise in other respects. Only her intimate friends were invited to the wedding ceremony, and to these she said, "I want you to feel that it is you I invite, not your gifts. If your love impels you to give me some simple memento of yourself it will be cherished, but I'd rather have a pincushion made by your own hand, or a little flower painted by yourself, than the most costly purchased picture or most elegant piece of silver that you bought, because you thought it was expected. And if, when you come, you bring no gift but your love and blessing, I shall feel that that is the richest treasure."

There was no display of presents to a vulgar curiosity, no collection of duplicate butter-knives or berry-spoons to be secretly disposed of after the wedding. The gifts were few and not costly, but each told its own story of personal affection, and therefore really had a meaning.

This sensible young woman introduced another innovation into her wedding. She would not listen to the suggestion of a bridal tour. "I do not want to be stared at and commented on by strangers," she said. "Let us go to some quiet spot in the mountains or by the sea, and let us live with each other and with nature." In after years she often said, "I would not miss from my memory the picture of those happy days for anything that any trip on railway trains and sojourns at hotels could give me. We had time and opportunity to learn each other's souls as we could not have done amid 'the madding crowd;' and we have loved each other more truly, I know, because in those early wedded days we sat with Nature and Nature's God in the true companionship which such solitude alone can bring."

I never see the parade of a fashionable wedding that I am not reminded of her and of a sad contrast to her experience, when two young people were married amid a blaze of light, a rain of flowers, and under the curious eyes of hundreds of strangers took their wedding tour, while the papers glowingly described the dress and beauty of the bride, the necktie and the trousers of the groom, and pictures of the two were labeled "The Happy Couple." In two years the bride came home to her parents wrecked in health and broken in heart.

There is a beauty in a golden wedding that truly celebrates a happy union of half a century. But when life is all untried, when perhaps the two young people know nothing of what is before them, it may be are but little acquainted with each other, and have mistaken the thrill of passion for the steady exaltation of love, then it would seem wiser to make the occasion one of most solemn import, free from glitter and show, and full of that deep meaning which makes the heart stand still in reverence for life's deepest mysteries.

O, gallant young groom, it may seem a slight thing To take this young girl as your bride; To place on her finger the plain golden ring, Around her these bright flower-festoons to fling, But have you e'er thought what the future will bring To you in this life so untried?

Have you thought how your temper may often be tried? That you may grow gouty and old, That the fair smiling face of your bonnie young bride May grow pale and haggard, and wrinkled, beside, Or she prove a sloven and scold?

And you, bonnie bride, on this glad wedding day, In the midst of the curious crowd, Do you fancy that life will be always so gay? Can you work, can you wait, do you know how to pray, Can you suffer, and not cry aloud?

Can you watch out the hours by sad beds of pain? Can you bear and forbear and forgive? Can you cheerfully hope e'en when hoping is vain, And when hope is dead, and to die you would fain, Can you still feel it right you should live?

O, touchingly solemn and tender the hour, So full of deep meaning the vow You have uttered. And sorely you need Divine power To guide you and guard you in sunshine and shower, For trouble will come and love's delicate flower Be crushed, you can scarcely tell how.

And yet, dear heart, there is nothing that has such unconquerable vitality as love; but it must be true love, not self-love, not sentimentality, not passion, not any of the spurious emotions that masquerade under the name of love, and which wither with the slightest adverse wind.

Love is not an exotic, growing only in the conservatories of wealth. It is a hardy plant, covering desolate places with verdure, glowing amid the snows of mountain peaks, blossoming by night as well as by day, hiding defects, clinging to ruins, enduring drouth and heat and cold.

I know a woman who says that there should never be marriage where there are unpleasant peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, or even mannerisms; but should we act on that principle, few would marry. Love is sometimes said to be blind in the days of wooing, but wearing magnifying glasses after wedlock. True love is never blind, but he is capable of judging of true relative values, and will count as naught the slight defect when measured by the overwhelming perfection. Who has not seen men devoted to wives who were homely or peculiar, but who were genuinely pure and true?

"I don't care," said one woman, "if my husband is bald and cross-eyed, he has a heart of gold."

True love is not blind, but with a deep, keen insight looks through the encasing garment of human imperfections, and sees within the divine ego, and because it recognizes the true inner self that is worthy, hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things, and never faileth.

THE END.

Offices _of_ Publication

# IN THE UNITED STATES. The Vir Publishing Company, 200-214 N. Fifteenth St., Philadelphia, Pa.

# IN ENGLAND. The Vir Publishing Company, 4 Imperial B'l'd'g's, Ludgate Circus, London, E.C.

# IN CANADA. Ryerson Press, Cor. Queen and John Sts. Toronto, Ontario.

"What a Young Girl Ought to Know."

BY MRS. MARY WOOD-ALLEN, M.D.

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