They
are good for a people to rejoice with, and good also for a marriage,
because through all their joy there is something solemn,--a tone of that
voice which we have heard so often at funerals. It is good to see how
everybody, up to this old age of the world, takes an interest in
weddings, and seems to have a faith that now, at last, a couple have come
together to make each other happy. The high, black, rough old cathedral
tower sent out its chime of bells as earnestly as for any bridegroom and
bride that came to be married five hundred years ago. I went into the
churchyard, but there was such a throng of people on its pavement of flat
tombstones, and especially such a cluster along the pathway by which the
bride was to depart, that I could only see a white dress waving along,
and really do not know whether she was a beauty or a fright. The happy
pair got into a post-chaise that was waiting at the gate, and immediately
drew some crimson curtains, and so vanished into their Paradise. There
were two other post-chaises and pairs, and all three had postilions in
scarlet. This is the same cathedral where, last May, I saw a dozen
couples married in the lump.
In a railway carriage, two or three days ago, an old merchant made rather
a good point of one of the uncomfortable results of the electric
telegraph. He said that formerly a man was safe from bad news, such as
intelligence of failure of debtors, except at the hour of opening his
letters in the morning; and then he was in some degree prepared for it,
since, among (say) fifteen letters, he would be pretty certain to find
some "queer" one.
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