Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1882-10-27
MY WEDDING TOUR.

was only seventeen when Charlie mar
ried me- and wrote myself for the first
time Mrs Charles Vail, j., and saw the
initials of the same blazoned on the end of
my new Saratoga trunk, when we started
on our wedding journey. Ny wedding
journey! l can speak of it calmly now,
hut the time was when it narrowed up my
Utmost soul. To this day, Charlie becomes
wroth when it is mentioned, and says it
is my ''confounded imagination;" but he
only one of those convenient little loop
holes through which big Insecurity can
crawl on emergency; and the facts remain.
ing unchanged and un6isputable, shall
Imagine, then, reader or listener, who
ever you may be, that the last silken train
has swept itself out of Trinity Chapel, and
the last of the inevitable wedding
March, shuddered itself out of the big
eroaning organ. and that Charlie and l
are married. Also. that the kissing and
CRYING over is achieved, and the voices of
my husbands sister and my maiden aunts.
calling down blessings on our heads, are
happily lost in distance-that the only
sound we hear IS the rattle and roar of an
express train laundering eastward, and I
am looking out into the golden MONDAY,
watching the fields and roads and villages
and woodlands race past us, and sweep
back in a stream like running water
There we sat, two blissful young fools
but it isn't of our bliss, or our foolishness
either, that am going to tell you-only
of the single adventure of our wedding
| tour.
| Charlie hadn't told me where we were
to go. and I rather liked being left in ig-
norance. knowing no more than that we
were being swept away to some little par
adise of our own-it might be an island of
the Hesperides, or Crusoe's kingdom, or
Eden itself. We stopped at a good many
stations by the way, that looked anything
but paradisica1; but 1 saw everything
| through glass; rosily, as [ sat there by
| Charities side. The shadows were grow
ing short, and it was just noon, when we
stopped at some ''vi!le" or other, whose
long, low. struggling, buildings, crowding
close upon the track. and the broad dus-
ty village street, branching off at right
angles. are photographed upon my memo
nv. Not for anything intrinsically re-
markable; there were only a good many
teams and farm-wagons, and open carria-
ges, and light carryalls standing about,
with the lazy horses rubbing their noses
against worm-eaten posts, and plenty of
people upon the platform, crowding TO-
gether for greetings and good-bys; it was
common place, everyday picture enough.
and not even pretty one, except the
fragments. There was general exodus
from the car, and rush dinnerward, as
we supposed. toward the swinging sign of
some s'house" or other down the lazy lit
tie country street; and Charlie looking at
his watch, said it was twelve o'clock-and
didn't want some lunch?
OF course I didn't, but of course he said
must have it, and Immediately started
up. He wouldn't be five minutes, he said,
and l mustn't move till be came back. 1
was to guard our two seats, and let no one
come nigh them. and, above all, was to
sit still. and not be led astray by any pos
sible warnings to change cars: severe 60