The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-07-03
CUSTOMS OF MARRIAGE.
Their Origin and the Manner c
Weddings in Various Countries.

Weddings in Various Countries.
| There are certain customs connected
with the marriage ceremony that seem
to be universal From Hindoostan to
America a wedding means gowns, dow
dry, gifts, a ring, wine, food Always
the two latter. They drink toasts to
the health of the brides among the
ParSeeS of Bombay, even as Vice-PreSi-
dent Stevenson's friends will drink to
his fair daughter. They eat sausages
and spareribs and pickles in Amster-
dam, while we eat truffies and terrapin
at Delmonicos. a wedding is a festi-
VAL season of flowers and iollifica-
ton, and where there is food of an
extra kind and flowing bowl to match
and Sunday clothes to look at
The reason that weddings are looked
upon and celebrated as seasons of re-
/ Jolcing are obvious and numerous and
admitted with various degrees OF
frankness. A Chinaman, for instance,
when asked why he marries, will say
without fear: Have great many
things in my house, must have wife
to look after them, very Important
But then in China the color of the we'd
ding dress is not even the same as
ours. 1t is usually scarlet, gayly en-
broidered, according to the means of
the brides parents, in gold and silk,
painted, not gently and carefully but
boldly and thickly. quite as if she were
preparing for some theatrical scene.
She wears no delicate tulle veil, but a
thick red one to hide, not to enhance,
her beauty, because it is not until after
the ceremony that the husband looks
for the first time on the face OF his
future companion.
The old Chinese marriage customs,
q hi
and fought for her until he carried her
home on the saddle before him, are
matched by our feudaI time wooings
before the day of marriages by fas-
cination, and even before the day of
marriage by purchase.
The mercantile part of marriages. by
/ the way, is everywhere conspicuous,
almost as conspicuous as the food and
the wine that mark it's celebration In
Patagonia, for instance, the principal
feature of the marriage rite consists
in the mere removal of the daughters
chattels from her parents tent. To
this custom is added a certain amount
OF poetry and sentiment, for, as she
departs, she carries a blessing and
benediction from her father, whom we
may imagine sitting cross-legged in
his horseskin coat In Africa a bride
is bought for so many cows In the
book of Proverbs we are told that a
good wife is above rubies; in India she
is not even worth a rupee. In Poland,
however, she is considered to be worth
so much that even the wedding guests
are supposed to be willing to contribute
to her dover for the mere privilege of
a dance or a kiss. On table in one
corner of the banqueting hall is a dish
into which everyone who dances with
the bride is expected to deposit
small sum of money. generally 20 or
in Poland they haven't jewel shops
where guests may purchase their ia
vors.
1t was an Elizabethan poet who de-
clared black the proper garb for wild
ows, purple for wives, white for mai
deTs, and wedding rings date as far
back as-well, Swinburne assures us
that the first wedding ring ever put
ON a brides finger was designed by
one Prometheus, and wrought of iron
and adamant by Tubal Cain. He
says further that it was placed on the
fourth finger of the left hand, because
by received opinion of the learned and
experienced in ripping up and anato-
MIXING hens bodies, there is a vein of
blood which passeth from the fourth
finger into the heart called vena
amoriS-lOve'S vein. Some common
place person has sought to crush this
romantic explanation. by suggesting
that the ring was placed on the left
hand merely because married women
were required to do so much work
with the right hand.-New York Jour
nal