The Secrets of the Great City / A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City

by James Dabney McCabe

MARRIAGES.

Only wealthy marriages are tolerated in New York society. For men or women to marry "beneath" them is a crime society cannot forgive. There must be fortune on one side. Marriages for money are directly encouraged. It is not uncommon for a man who has made money to make the marriage of his daughter the means of getting the family into society. He will go to some young man within the pale of good society, and offer him the hand of his daughter and a fortune. The condition on the part of the person to whom the offer is made is, that he shall use his influence to get the bride's family within the "charmed circle." Such proposals are seldom refused.

When a marriage is decided upon, it is the bounden duty of the happy pair to be married in a fashionable church. To be married in or buried from Grace Church is the desire of every fashionable heart. Invitations are issued to the friends and acquaintances of the two families, and no one is admitted into the church without such a card. Often "no cards" are issued, and the church is jammed by the outside throng, who profane the holy temple by their unmannerly struggles to secure places from which the ceremony can be viewed. Two clergymen are engaged to tie the knot, a single minister being insufficient for such grand affairs. A reporter is on hand, who furnishes the city papers with the full particulars of the affair. The dresses, the jewels, the appearance of the bride and groom, and the company generally, are described with a slavishness that is disgraceful.

If the wedding is at Grace Church, Brown, the "great sexton," is in charge of all the arrangements. He understands every detail connected with such an affair, and will not allow any one to interfere with him. A wedding over which he presides is sure to be a success. It is needless to say he has his time well taken up with such engagements. At weddings and at parties, Brown makes out the list of persons to be invited. He allows no interference. He knows his invitations will be accepted, and as he knows who is in town, both stranger and resident, he can always make out a full list. He directs every thing, and carries his arrangements out with the decision and authority of an autocrat. The Lenten Season is his bugbear. It is fashionable to observe Lent in New York, and funerals are then the only opportunities for the display of his peculiar talents. These he makes as interesting as possible. He charges a liberal price for his services, and is said to have amassed considerable money.

FASHIONABLE DEATH.

As it is the ambition of every one to live fashionable, it is their chief wish to be laid in the grave in the same style. Undertakers at fashionable funerals are generally the sexton of some fashionable church, that, perhaps, of the church the deceased was in the habit of attending. This individual prescribes the manner in which the ceremony shall be carried out, and advises certain styles of family mourning. Sometimes the blinds are closed and the gas lighted. The lights in such cases are arranged in the most artistic manner, and every thing is made to look as "interesting" as possible.

A certain fashionable sexton always refuses to allow the female members of the family to follow their dead to the grave. He will not let them be seen at the funeral at all, as he says "it's horridly vulgar to see a lot of women crying about a corpse; and, besides, they're always in the way."

After the funeral is over, none of the bereaved ones can be seen for a certain length of time, the period being regulated by a set decree. They spend the days of their seclusion in consultations with their modiste, in preparing the most fashionable mourning that can be thought of; in this they seem to agree fully with a certain famous modiste, who declared to a widow, but recently bereaved, that "fashionable and becoming mourning is so comforting to a person in affliction."

A ROMANCE OF FIFTH AVENUE.

Hollow as it is, Shoddy in New York has its romances. One of the most striking of those which occur to us is the story of a family which we shall designate by the name of Swigg. There will, doubtless, be those who will recognize them.