“I like to tend weddings,” said Mrs. Partington, as she came back from a neighboring church where one had been celebrated, and hung up her shawl, and replaced the black bonnet in her long-preserved band-box. “I like to see young people come together with the promise to love, cherish, and nourish each other. But it is a solemn thing, is matrimony—a very solemn thing—where the pasture comes into the chancery, with his surplus on, and goes through with the cerement of making ’em man and wife. It ought to be husband and wife; for it ain’t every husband that turns out a man. I declare I shall never forget how I felt when I had the nuptial ring put on to my finger, when Paul said, ‘With my goods I thee endow.’ He used to keep a dry-goods store then, and I thought he was going to give me all there was in it. I was young and simple, and didn’t know till arterwards that it only meant one calico gound in a year. It is a lovely sight to see the young people plighting their trough, and coming up to consume their vows.”
She bustled about and got tea ready, but abstractedly she put on the broken teapot, that had lain away unused since Paul was alive, and the teacups, mended with putty, and dark with age, as if the idea had conjured the ghost of past enjoyment to dwell for the moment in the home of present widowhood.
A young lady, who expected to be married on Thanksgiving night, wept copiously at her remarks, but kept on hemming the veil that was to adorn her brideship, and Ike sat pulling bristles out of the hearth-brush in expressive silence.
Yet not all the wits of the day were newspaper men, for Oliver Wendell Holmes left his essays and novels now and then to give his native humor full play.
The “Deacon’s Masterpiece,” often called “The One Hoss Shay” is a classic, and many short poems are among our best witty verses, while Holmes’ genial humor pervades his Breakfast Table books.
THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS
I wrote some lines once on a time,
In wondrous merry mood,
And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.