Year: 1868

so new and changed is her future You hone
she will be happy you hope she will never forget
you, and your tenderness for her, and you send
her some dainty gift, whose beauty shall delight
her-whose daily presence shall sweetly remind
her of you. You do not send it that Mrs. Smith
may wonder whether it cost as much as hers.


You do not send it to be regarded by all who
gaze upon it, as the measure of our "lean and
low ability, by the DEAR five hundred friends
of the bride; and when it is so used, if you have
your delcacy within you, you are panied and
surprised Somebody, in an evil hour, once
showed her bridal presents and then the pretty
custom at once became vulgarity If the gifts
were to be shown, this one must give, and that
one, not because her heart moved her-not be-
cause her purse permitted, but because her Of
ferings must not be absent. And now every
fashionable wedding is polite extortion, delib
crate tax levy on the friends of the bride, to be
paid in silver spoons and butter dishes. One of
the sweetest girls know told me that she asked
such and such people to her wedding-vugar,
miserable acquaintance as they were-becauSe
she knew they would give her presents. Indeed,
she confessed without the slightest shame
facedness, that she gave wedding on account
of the tariff. 6 1t will be such help toward
housekeeping, she strkingly remarked. Why,
the queen in Hamlet miracle of delicacy
and propriety compared with these rapacous
young women, and the funeral-baked meats that
coldly furnished forth the marriage table, were
Il less uOlIOWWedSI Ludu lue WeuuluR pTedhIdSt OF
to-day. 1t is an incredible fact that wedding
presents are hired from the jewellers and labeled
with the names of suppositious relatives, to
make up the melancholy display 1t is a horri-
BILE sequence that policemen should be placed on
guard over the laden tables during the reception.
No, reprobation could be so severe as the state
meht of the fact.


O, girls are you children of Revolutionary
mothers? Are you daughters and sisters, and
sweethearts of men who fought our late battles
and found life other than joke and sham
Are you akin to the women who upheld their
hands, and nursed them living and buried them
dead and can you make your daily lives wretch
ed pretence from maidenhood to death? you
love man with heart and soul marry him (pro-
vided, of course, that he loves you and asks
you). Ifyou don't love him, don't marry him,
though you die an old maid at ninety in the asy-
lum for INDECENT old maids, about to be estab-
lished in Boston. But let your marriage be SIM
pie and quiet and beautiful with love, but not
money. If you poor, do it in the name of
honesty, and for the sake of pure conscience.
And in either event, do it as an offering to deli
cacy and the fitness of things. If you have we'd
ding presents then, most of them will come be-
cause the givers love you, and, loving, desire to
give the gifts of love. Treasure them sacredly,
but the wedding day send them to the bank,
or hide them in the back attic, or push them un-
der the bed, or put them in the refrigerator, or
do anything but shake them in the face of the
public and say, g Behold how pleased ] am with
my rattle, how tickled with my straw"


And after marriage, something from Del
monicos for a sea-deep bathing and something
from Wallack's for West street and the five
Points and something from Madam Pinchon for
flowers and books, and something from Stewards
for drives in the park, and you and your special
Adolphus will be much less likely to talk of
separate maintenance than the wretched Florin-
das and Adolphuses who welded before
this article was written.


And now that | know there will be no more
fashionable weddings among the readers of the
Ledger, l shall go to bed and sleep the sleep Of
the Just