The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.)

Unlike the other volumes of The Wit and Humor of America in Project Gutenberg, Volume V was not prepared from the Library Edition, and thus has discontinuous page numbers and will not match the index in Volume X. In addition, a few pieces in Volume V are duplicated in Volume VI, but all have been retained as printed in each edition.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Not a sigh was heard, nor a funeral tone, As the man to his bridal we hurried; Not a woman discharged her farewell groan, On the spot where the fellow was married.
We married him just about eight at night, Our faces paler turning, By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the gas-lamp's steady burning.
No useless watch-chain covered his vest, Nor over-dressed we found him; But he looked like a gentleman wearing his best, With a few of his friends around him.
Few and short were the things we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow, But we silently gazed on the man that was wed, And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we silently stood about, With spite and anger dying, How the merest stranger had cut us out, With only half our trying.
Lightly we'll talk of the fellow that's gone, And oft for the past upbraid him; But little he'll reck if we let him live on, In the house where his wife conveyed him.
But our hearty task at length was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the spiteful squib and pun The girls were sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we turned to go,— We had struggled, and we were human; We shed not a tear, and we spoke not our woe, But we left him alone with his woman.
The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. Happy be! for fair are ye! the gentle singer told them; But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them. Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity! Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half parson-like, half soldierly.