_From the Transcript, July 6, 1905._
A CAMP WEDDING.
On the last Wednesday of June Miss Mabel Hay Barrows, the daughter of Hon. Samuel J. Barrows and Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, two very well-known figures in the intellectual life of Boston and New York, was married to Mr. Henry Raymond Mussey, a young professor at Bryn Mawr. And the ceremony, which took place at Cedar Lodge, her mother’s summer camp, was one of the most original and picturesque which it is possible to imagine. Miss Barrows herself is a girl with a refreshingly individual outlook upon life, and with a great variety of interests, as well as a strong dramatic instinct, and every one who knew her well looked forward to this wedding as promising to be an occasion at once unique and beautiful. And they were not disappointed, those eighty odd guests, who traveled so far, from east, west, north and south, to the little camp snuggled away among the sympathetic trees bordering the Indian Lake, beyond the Canadian border.
Cedar Lodge, the Barrows’ camp, crowns a beautiful wooded slope above the lake, a steep climb by a winding path bringing one to the log cabin, with its broad piazza facing the sunset and overlooking the lake, through misty tree tops which still wear the tender freshness of hymeneal June. At either end of this ample balcony the guests were seated at four o’clock of that perfect Wednesday, leaving space in the center for the bridal party, of which there was as yet no visible sign.
Promptly at four one heard, far below, echoing poetically from the lake, the first notes of a bugle sounding a wedding march. It was the signal that the bridal party was approaching, and the guests began to tingle with excitement. Nearer and nearer, came the bugle, and at last through the green birch and alder and hemlock came the gleam of white—a living ribbon winding among the trees. As the procession approached, zigzagging up the steep path, it was very effective, suggesting an old Greek chorus, or a festival group from some poetic page, as why should it not, the bride being herself an ancient Greek in spirit, with her translations of the classics and her profession as stage manager of Hellenic dramas? The bridal party, a score and eight in number, was all in white, with touches of red, camp colors. First came the bugler, blowing manfully. After him two white flower girls, scattering daisies along the path. Then followed the two head ushers, white from top to toe, with daisy chains wreathing their shoulders in Samoan fashion. Next, with flowing black academic robes, a striking contrast of color, climbed the two ministers—one the bride’s father, the other a local clergyman, whose word, since this was a “foreign country,” was necessary to legalize the bond. Two more ushers preceded the groom and his best man in white attire; and bridesmaids, two and two, with a maid of honor, escorted the bride, who walked with her mother.
As for the bride herself, surely no other ever wore garb so quaint and pretty. Her dress was of beautiful white silk, simply shirred and hemstitched, the web woven by hand in Greece and brought thence by Miss Barrows herself during a trip in search of material and antiquarian data for her Greek plays. The gown was short, giving a glimpse of white shoes and open-work stockings—part of her mother’s bridal wear on her own wedding day, of which this was an anniversary. The bridal veil was a scarf of filmy white liberty, with an exquisite hand-painted border of pale pink roses. It was worn Greek fashion, bound about the head with a fillet, garland of red partridge berries and the twisted vine. In one hand she carried a bouquet of forget-me-nots and maidenhair; in the other an alpenstock of cedar, peeled white, as did the rest of the party. As they wound slowly up through the beautiful wild grove, with the lake gleaming through the green behind them and the bugle blowing softly, it was hard to realize that this was Canada in the year 1905, and not Greece in some poetic ante-Christian age, or Fairyland itself in an Endymion dream.
So with sweet solemnity they wound up to the crest of the hill, passed through the cabin, and came out into the sunlit space on the balcony, the flower girls strewing daisies as a carpet for the bridal pair, who advanced and stood before the minister, the other white-robed figures forming a picturesque semi-circle about them.
The ceremony was brief and simple; the exchange of vows and rings; a prayer by each of the clergymen and a benediction; the hymn “O Perfect Love” sung by the bridal party. Then Mr. and Mrs. Mussey stood ready to receive their friends in quite the orthodox way. But surely no other bride and groom ever stood with such glorious background of tree and lake, ineffable blue sky and distant purple mountains, while the air was sweet with the odor of Canadian flowers, which seem to be richer in perfume than ours, and melodious with the song of countless birds, which seemed especially sympathetic, as birds in Fairyland and in ancient Greece were fabled to be.
After a gay half hour of congratulations, general chatter and refreshments, came word that the wedding party was to move once more, this time to escort the bride and groom down to the lake, where waited the bridal canoe.
Again the white procession passed the green slope, but this time merrily, in careless order, escorted by the guests, who were eager to see the wedded couple start upon their brief journey. For the honeymoon was to be spent at Birchbay, another camp hidden like a nest among the trees a mile farther down the lake. The bridal canoe, painted white and lined with crimson, wreathed with green and flying the British flag astern, waited at the slip. Amid cheers and good wishes the lovers embarked and paddled away down the lake, disappearing at last around a green point to the south. A second canoe, containing the bride’s father and mother, and a bride and groom-elect, soon to be elsewhere wed, escorted the couple to their new home, where they are to be left in happy seclusion for so long as they may elect. And so ended the most romantic wedding which Lake Memphremagog ever witnessed; a wedding which will never be forgotten by any present—save, perhaps, the youngest guest, aged two months.