"I am!" she snapped.
"Join hands," the justice commended. When they had done so he raised his
own right hand impressively and spoke solemnly:
"I pronounce you twain woman and husband."
* * *
A lady received a visit from a former maid three months after the girl
had left to be married.
"And how do you like being married?" the lady inquired.
The bride replied with happy enthusiasm:
"Oh, it's fine, ma'am--getting married is! Yes'm, it's fine! but, land's
sake, ma'am," she added suddenly, "ain't it tedious!"
* * *
The negro, after obtaining a marriage license, returned a week later to
the bureau, and asked to have another name substituted for that of the
lady.
"I done changed mah mind," he announced. The clerk remarked that the
change would cost him another dollar and a half for a new license.
"Is that the law?" the colored man demanded in distress. The clerk
nodded, and the applicant thought hard for a full minute:
"Gee!" he said at last. "Never mind, boss, this ole one will do. There
ain't a dollar and a half difference in them niggers no how."
* * *
The New England widower was speaking to a friend confidentially a week
after the burial of his deceased helpmate.
"I'm feelin' right pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in
years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an'
smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her
duty by me an' the children, an' she warn't sickly, an' I never hearn a
cross word out o' her in all the thutty year we lived together. But
dang it all! Somehow, I never did like Maria.... Yes, I'm feelin' pretty
peart."
* * *
There were elaborate preparations in colored society for a certain
wedding. The prospective bride had been maid to a lady who met the girl
on the street a week after the time set for the ceremony and inquired
concerning it:
"Did you have a big wedding, Martha?"
"'Deed ah did, missus, 'deed ah did, de most splendiferous occasion ob
de season."
"Did you receive handsome presents?"
"Yes'm, yes'm, de hull house was jes' crowded wiv de gifts."
"And was your house nicely decorated?"
"Yes'm, yes'm. An' everybody done wear der very best, look jes' lak a
white-folks' weddin', yes'm."
"And yourself, Martha, how did you look?"
"Ah was sutinly some scrumptious, yes'm. Ah done wore mah white bridal
dress an' orange blossoms, yes'm. Ah was some kid."
"And the bridegroom, how did he appear?"
"De bridegroom? Aw, dat triflin', low-down houn' dawg, he didn't show up
at all, but we had a magnificious occasion wivout him, jes' de same!"