The Phoenix herald., 1879-07-26
Marrying as a Fine Art.

Every once in little while, people who want to get married rack their brains, SD much, or rather so little of them as they possess, for some manner of marriage out of the ordinary line. They don want to be married like common people. They will not be married as everybody is married. Sometimes the two harmless idiots get into boat, and TOW into the lake or river, and the ceremony Is performed to the soft, romantic accompaniment of the
 tapping of the waves, the rocking Of the
 boat, the blistering rays of the sun, re-
 aecting from the water and the smell of the fish that have been trying to live out on shore for three weeks, and haven't succeeded yet, and are appar- ently farther away from success than ever. Sometimes, in weddings of tEis romantic nature, the clergyman, when he stands up to perform the ceremony, falls ovefboard and the scene of the wedding Is thus more indelibly i'm printed on the memories of the bridal party. In very rare instances, when the weather was unpropitious, the bride has been known to get sea-sick. This IS also very pleasant wedding con comitant. but when two young people have solemnly and deliberately made up their minds to make fools of them selves, they do not think of these dread full possibilities. Or, as they are on the lookout for something unusual, perhaps these things just suit them. suited too well.
 Sometimes, the lunacy takes the form of balloon wedding. The parties a,~ al nd for the glory of mankind 1t Is to be said that this manner of people always do go to the circus they would go the circus as their bridal tour, rather than not go at all i; wei, they wait until a circus with balloon comes along, and the meaner the circus the more certain 1t is to have balloon, and then the two principal idiots, accompanied by a clergyman-and we grieve to say that in almost every instance of this kind clergyman has been found who knows little enough to join this kind of a mob-and the rest of the bridal party, and sometimes reporter, for at rare intervals reporter has been discovered who hadn't sense enough to keep out of such a free exhibition of sublime stiffness and then the balloon is let up to the length of the rope, and there, dangling between heaven and earth, the clergyman performs a ceremony that is blessing to mankind, for the balloon that carries up two idiots, brings down but one. No bridal party has ever fallen out of a balloon yet, but 1t is to be hoped that some day the rope will break, and the balloon will sail of with the whole crowd, and empty them into the hot springs, just when they are boiling their boiling art.
 The commonest and perhaps the mildest form of this lunacy, is when the patients are married by telegraph. The female patient in one office, the male incurable in another, a hundred miles or more away. Then the ques- tions and responses and pledges are ticked back and forth, and they are married. Not half so prettily and sen sibly as they could be in cosy little parlor or handsome church, but 1t was little out of the ordinary method. This is the shabbiest marriage of all. In the other cases, if the bride stands chance of falling out of the boat, or sailing away in a balloon, her lover takes the same chances. But this tele- graphic business Is cowardly, skulk- ing sort of an affair. If the young man hasn't the manhood and courage to stand up and look into the girls eyes and hold her hand while he makes her his wife, he has no right to have wife. How inexpressibly mean and lonesome and foolish a man must feel at the con- clusion of such ridiculous ceremony. He is married, and he doesn't know where his wife is, or what she is doing, or where she is going. He has pretty well-defined idea that everything that wears a beard is kissing her, except himself. He is just about as much married as the young operator who sent the messages. He must look like fool. Certainly he feels like one. And she? Poor girl, she doesn't know how her husband joked nor what kind of stories he told, while the ceremony was going on. She doesn't know that the whole crowd, at his end of the line, doesn't walk right into the nearest beer saloon, the minute the amen" Is ticked of, to congratulate him and her self. She doesn't know how roaring drunk he may get that night. She doesn't know beyond doubt, who she has married, if indeed she is married at all. He may go back on those dis patches sent in his name, and say that Peltan and Marble sent them, and that he didn't know anything about it. Of all the weak-minded matrimonial nov elites, the telegraphic system is q little the silliest. -HdlCE-Eye.