Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-29
FOR JUNE BRIDES.
Wise Words to Young Women Abou
10 Marry What Does the
Wedding Meant
Do Our Modern Girls Understand Marriage :
What Young Women Should Feel in
Their Hearts-sensIble Advice.
tcopyrighted 1890 by the Author. !

For the Gazette.
1t one of the condolences of nature
that when the high tide of life fiushes
every boueh, when the earth is all afoam
with blossom, and sunshine is at the full
in the heavens, that life Is a. high tide
also in the human heart, and that then,
as If he remembered the first lovers in
the garden of Eden, the lover most often
chooses June as the season in which to
cad home his bride.
June, with its sunbeams, its south
winds, its carlands, its green woods, is
the country through which the bride goes
TO take possession of her kingdom in her
lovers heart and life. The earth offers
n velvet sward for her feet to trend; tho
apple tree spreads wide its brooding
boughs, like lowering mother-8ings,
and drops the rosy snow of flower petals
in a vel. about her; the wine of joy is at
her lips, and she goes forth into her new
life to the estate of q happiness surpass-
ing speech, TO the sweetest and most
honored name of wife, to reign and to
serve, 10 lose her life and find it in an
others, to be, although now she may not
old self as the earth is other than the
maiden moon.
We look at her as she "shadows her
beauty in white wells" and moves along
with her court, with her bushes and her
smiles, the glisten of her silken robes,
the glImmer of her lace, as if she were
but the feature of q lovely pageant, es if
shenigrew pictorial effect for the plea s.
ure OF our eyes. We do not realize the
solemnity, the sweet awfulness Of the
sight, aud that we behold a sacrament in
which the Lord of life himself bears part
as much as when essential force first
evolved visible shape and spirit took on
matter.
Does the young bride, among her cloud
of maidens, realize all this herself2 Are
her thoughts with the great mystery
which is about to absorb her life into
another's? Or do the weighty matters
of her paraphernalia, OF her wedding
gifts, of her tram, OF the church pro-
cessional, the 1.-THE OF mint and anise and
cummin, exclude perception of the wsy
INTO that new sphere just closing about
her, In which she shall walk to oil out
side view the same, but in reality another
being, although she may never be aware
of it till she has reached the farther
boundary2 Has she, as Marie Mitohe IL
used to say, allowed the inftnitesmals to
shut out the intnite2 Is she losing the
great meaning of marriage, that type Of
all perfection, that state and condition
which is u cosmos in itself, through
which the vast currents of life move ever
upward and keep the individual in rela-
ton not only to the race, but to all the
universe of being, from the first sponge
that ever built its frame to the last and
finest of humanity?
Let us believe that the bride most like
a butterfly among them all understands
something of the great miracle. It can
only be then with the reverence due the
celebration of some mystery OF old,
where one draws near the Ancient of An
clients, that the bride approaches the al
tar, whether it be the altar of the church
or the equally consecrated altar OF her
fathers house and home-au altar that
burns to heaven with the white flame of
all pure love and devotion aud gleduess,
or else on which is to be offered the bleed
ing sacrifice of broken hearts and lives.
Full often consciousness of this betrays
itself by the trembling tones in the vow
that invokes invisible powers to witness
the bridal; and quite as often the con-
seriousness of it Is SO appalling that all the
nervous strength is summoned to carry OF
the hour triumphantly, and hide emotion
from the curious crowd that custom calls
into the solemn acts of lives, to the bridal
and the burial rites, the two moments
when feeling is at its most intense and
should be most sacred and unseen.
Yet because the occasion is supreme it
does not follow that the beautiful "trip
nh 20
1t is frivolous or out of place. 1t would
have its use if it were for nothing else
than to draw the fire of eyes from ire
mors, tears and self-revelation. Yet since
time began the wedding has been a thing
of splendor. ''He has covered me with
the robe of righteousness as a BRIDE
groom decketh himself with ornaments,
and as bride adorneth herself
with her jewels, " says the Hebrew poet,
whose name for the bride is ''the per-
fected one,' and with whom the word
signifying the bridegroom 8 ornaments
signifies also the garments for glory and
beauty, - worn by the high priest when
robes Of white linen were worn by all
priests. 1t is fitting that everything that
can symbolic innocence and purity and
add to grace and loveliness and lustre
should be about the bride; that she
should wear the multitudinous
lilac, the ever-fowering orange;
that the altar should be wreath
ed with the apple-boughs that
droop about the doors of home; that she
should pass splendid as vision, only
the cynIc saying, like a lamb dressed
for the Offering; but the lover, the
sympathizer and all they who belieYe in
the beauty of holiness, IN the joy Of
sacrifice; in the under-heaven of mar
ried love. in the vital union with God
there, saying as the altar itself is dressed
in flames and flowers and snowy drapery,
as any monarch Is approached
in robes of state, as all noble I
ceremonial is made pictorial aud
beautiful.
II in her soul there is another altar
where the saerifcial fire is ever burning;
if she has said to her beloved, meaning il
as one means an oath, matching her
truth with her hope of his truth, ''Set
me rs seal upon thine heart, as seal
upon thine arm, for love is strong as
death;n IL she has remembered also that
90 ealosy is cruel as the gravel" If she
has sworn absolute self-surrender and
and loss In her beaoved;
if she gives thanks for strength and |
hQeness and fire and tenderness in him