In the evening I scrawled away at my journal till past
ten o'clock; for I have really made it a matter of conscience to keep a
tolerably full record of my travels, though conscious that everything
good escapes in the process. In the morning we went out and visited the
MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL,
a particularly black and grimy edifice, containing some genuine old wood
carvings within the choir. We stayed a good while, in order to see some
people married. One couple, with their groomsman and bride's-maid, were
sitting within the choir; but when the clergyman was robed and ready,
there entered five other couples, each attended by groomsman and
bride's-maid. They all were of the lower orders; one or two respectably
dressed, but most of them poverty-stricken,--the men in their ordinary
loafer's or laborer's attire, the women with their poor, shabby shawls
drawn closely about them; faded untimely, wrinkled with penury and care;
nothing fresh, virgin-like, or hopeful about them; joining themselves to
their mates with the idea of making their own misery less intolerable by
adding another's to it. All the six couple stood up in a row before the
altar, with the groomsmen and bride's-maids in a row behind them; and
the clergyman proceeded to marry them in such a way that it almost
seemed to make every man and woman the husband and wife of every other.
However, there were some small portions of the service directed towards
each separate couple; and they appeared to assort themselves in their
own fashion afterwards, each one saluting his bride with a kiss.
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