The age-herald., 1900-12-09

chanting. In the hurrying moments the beholder fancied himself dreaming at the gate of joy. and all that dreaming bride, and that bride such as she And withal she was so true, so good, so pure of heart, so lovely, so real, so humanl He recalled a verse read by rote to childish ears years agone, that sometimes from the skies com- missioned angels come and dwell in earthly home, and he believed the legend true as he reverently looked upon her standing by the altar, her little heart riotous in its happiness
 She was little angel of joy, and for one instant she could not restrain the impulse to glance shyly and mischievously at the classic face of him who stood by her side in that supreme moment, strong and res olute and blissful, and he met the glance with the telegraph of the heart in a smile: a side flash of repressed merriment that told the oldest of all human stories in the newest and most beautiful of all human forms. And through 1t all that fair young creatures fair mother looked and loved and breathed blessings, the most appealing figure of all the thousand who looked and loved.
 Two souls there were servants of the bridal, in the bridal livery of convention, and each wearing where his wordless fleart kept it warm the brides rose as badge of her legion of honor. They had walked there in like guise when she was a little child who had never heard the swelling melody of marriage music or dreamed that brides blessed the earth. And now and then in glad bridal afterwhiles they had come and gone with young souls stout aad brave and loving, and treading the ~osestrewn aisle to the altar-place to be pledged one to the other in the abundance of happiness.
 These two, as they performed their gen. tier offices against the ceremonial of the hour remembered many things, recalled many faces, felt the touch of many a hand that was vanished. They heard anew the music of the other years, caught the odor of brides roses long faded, saw again rad iant figures that had passed when life was younger, and breathed the incense of per ished joys from unseen censers swung.
 It had been theirs through the years, marked upon the calendar of their hearts with beautiful faces of beautiful women, 10 pass in and out that Old house or pray CT in times of rejoicing, with here and : there a sorrow, and now the alchemy of faith was dissolving the film from many a fair face in the treasure house of their adoration. They beheld first one mystic procession, and then another, form at the wide portal through which had passed gen. erations of lovers bound to the altar, and generations of mourners sadly marching thither too, and in the mngling of the spirits of the past they saw many a cher ished form that shall not be seen again in any aftertime upon the earth. But the mourners passed from their vision in a flash of memory's light. powerless before the brighter and sweeter light which food ed the long prucessions of the brides of long years, sweeping onward to the rose- wreathed place where a great multitude of brides in their turn had stood in myster- ious and holy joy through three score years of glee and of grief to man the world around. Phantom brides and bride- erooms and phantom maids and knights