The golden wedding is a rare festivity—the great marriage bell made of wheat fully ripe; sheaves of corn; roses of the pure gold-color (the Marshal Niel is the golden-wedding flower par excellence). We can well imagine the parlors beautifully decorated with autumn leaves and evergreens, the children grouped about the aged pair, perhaps even a great-grandchild as a child bridesmaid, a bridal bouquet in the aged white hand. We can fancy nothing more poetical and pathetic than this festivity.
Whether or not a ring should be given by the husband to the wife on this occasion we must leave to the individual taste of the parties. No doubt it is a pleasant occasion for the gift,
"If she, by merit since disclosed,
Proved twice the woman I supposed,"
there is no doubt that she deserves another ring. We have read somewhere of a crown-diamond wedding; it is the sixty-fifth anniversary. Iron weddings are, we believe, the fifteenth anniversary. With silver, golden, and diamond weddings we are tolerably familiar, but, so far as we know, a crown-diamond wedding such as was celebrated a short time ago at Maebuell, in the island of Alsen, is a ceremony altogether without precedent in matrimonial annals. Having completed their sixty-fifth year of conjugal bliss, Claus Jacobsen and his venerable spouse were solemnly blessed by the parson of their parish, and went, for the fifth time in their long wedded life, through the form of mutual troth-plighting before the altar at which they had for the first time been united before the battle of Waterloo was fought. The united age of this crown- diamantine couple amount to one hundred and seventy-eight years!
We doubt if this constant pair needed any ring to remind them of their wedded duty. It is strange that the origin of the wedding ring is lost in obscurity. The "fyancel," or wedding ring, is doubtless of Roman origin, and was originally given at the betrothal as a pledge of the engagement. Juvenal says that at the commencement of the Christian era a man placed a ring on the finger of the lady whom he betrothed. In olden times the delivery of a signet-ring was a sign of confidence. The ring is a symbol of eternity and constancy. That it was placed on the woman's left hand denotes her subjection, and on the ring finger because it pressed a vein which communicates directly with the heart. So universal is the custom of wearing the wedding ring among Jews and Christians that no married woman is ever seen without her plain gold circlet, and she regards the loss of it as a sinister omen; and many women never remove it. This is, however, foolish, and it should be taken off and put on several times at first, so that any subsequent removal or loss need not jar painfully on the feelings.
The bride-cake cut by the bride, with the wedding ring for some fortunate future spouse, seems to be still potent. The twenty-five- year-old bride should cut a few pieces, then leave others to pass it; it is a day on which she should be waited upon.
Some persons, in celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding day, also repeat their wedding journey, and we know a very pleasant little route in England called the "silver-wedding journey," but this is, of course, a matter so entirely personal that it cannot be universally recommended.
The most graceful silver-wedding custom is for the bride and bridegroom to receive the greetings of their friends at first formally, then to leave the marriage bell or canopy of flowers and to go about among the company, becoming again host and hostess. They should spare their children, friends, and themselves tears and sad recollections. Some opulent brides and bridegrooms make it a silver wedding indeed by sending substantial presents to those who started in life with them but have been less fortunate than themselves.
CHAPTER XLI. SPRING AND SUMMER ENTERTAINMENTS.
As the season advances and the country bursts into glorious sudden spring, the garden party, the country dinner, the horseback excursions, and the asparagus parties, the hunts and the yacht voyages, the lawn-tennis and archery, the visits to the polo ground, and the delights of a visit to the friends who live within an hour of the city, at Orange and at Morristown, on the seagirt shore of Long Island or up the Hudson, begin to loom up before the city-bound worthy, and to throw a "rose hue o'er his russet cares."