The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.--Byron.
Quotation of this verse is made, not because it
celebrated a marriage--it, rather, commemorated the frightful carnage of
Waterloo--- but because it very faithfully represents the fashionable
beginning of wedded life, to which it alludes. There seems to be in
woman an inherited, instinctive desire for this kind of thing at her
marriage. It is cruel to deny her, therefore man usually goes through
with it like a martyr. My prejudices are so heartily enlisted against
"blow-outs" of this kind that I feel the compunctions of an honest
judge at sitting in such a case. Nevertheless, I may relate some things
I have seen, to show how badly a couple may start in life. Here is one
instance: The dust has filled the air for six blocks around some stately
church. The "hacks" and private barouches and coupes have been packed
together so that any movement was entirely impossible; the bride has
come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the
vestibule; there she has passed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way
down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a
smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a
pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist
has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory
of God most mighty, instead of the folly of man most miserable. Into the
church have thronged the elect, proud and disdainful; on the outside has
stared the vulgar multitude, too ignorant for anything but rapt
wonderment. From the temple of high-priced worship the celebrants have
passed, in a still more exclusive body, to a residence where a banquet
has been prepared by a man who generally makes ice cream for a living,
and where a dazzling display of wedding presents has been uncovered to
the careless gaze. Then the train bears away the twain of one foolish
flesh, and the farce is over.