I imagine the hour for which you pledged your troth has arrived. There
is much merry-making among your young friends, but there is an
undertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may have been the
gladdest and the best, and the joy of the whole round of relatives,
but when a young eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is
preparing to put out into sunshine and storm for itself, it feels its
wings tremble somewhat. So she has a good cry before leaving home, and
at the marriage father and mother always cry, or feel like it. If you
think it is easy to give up a daughter in marriage, though it be with
brightest prospects, you will think differently when the day comes. To
have all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood
to womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness an
anxiety, and her presence in your home an ever-increasing joy, and
then have her go away to some other home--aye, all the redolence of
orange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all the
rolling of wedding march in full diapason, and all the hilarious
congratulations of your friends cannot make you forget that you are
suffering a loss irreparable. But you know it is all right, and you
have a remembrance of an embarkation just like it twenty-five or
thirty years ago, in which you were one of the parties; and,
suppressing as far as possible your sadness, you say, "Good-bye."