A FEW CALM WORDS.
A LONDON paper tells how when a certain Dean of Chester was all ready to perform a marriage between persons of high standing, the bride was very late. When she reached the altar, to the question, "Wilt thou take this man?" she replied in most distinct tones, "I will not." On retiring with the Dean to the vestry, she explained that her late arrival was not her fault, and that the bridegroom had accosted her on her arrival at the church with, "G—d d——n you, if this is the way you begin you'll find it to to your cost when you're my wife."
That was no way to open up a honeymoon. They are not doing that way recently, and in the bon ton and dishabille select and etcetera society of the more metropolitan cities, such a remark would at once be considered as outre and Corpus Christi.
The groom should stop and consider that sometimes the most annoying accidents occur to a young lady in dressing. Suppose for instance that in stooping over to button her shoe she breaks a spoke in her corset and has to send it to the blacksmith shop, do you think that the groom is justified in kicking over the altar and dragging his affianced up the aisle by the hair of the head? We would rather suggest that he would not. There are other distressing accidents which may happen at such a time to the prospective bride, but we forbear to enter into the harrowing details. No man with the finer feelings of a gentleman will ever knock his new wife down in the church and tramp on her, until he knows to a reasonable degree of certainty that he is right. It may be annoying, of course, to the groom to stand and look out of the window for half an hour while the bride is allaying the hemorrhage of a pimple on her nose with a powder puff, but then, great hemlock! if a man can't endure that and smile, how will he behave when the clothesline falls down and the baby gets a kernel of corn up its nose?
These are questions which naturally occur to the candid and thinking mind and command our attention. The groom who would swear at his wife for being a few minutes late at the altar, would kill her and throw her stiffened remains over into the sheep corral if she allowed the twins to eat crackers in his bed and scatter the crumbs over his couch.
Let us look these matters calmly in the face, and not allow ourselves to drift away into space.