Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/83

60 is very handsome. I hope the gentlemen will keep to this fashion. [This was a fashion introduced by the Prince Consort, and it was very handsome, but it did not last long; the gloomy clawhammer soon displaced it. It was attempted again in 1870, but was blotted out.] Bishop Chase, of New Hampshire, is to perform the ceremony, and is here tonight with us, as are Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood, Mary Bostwick, Mary Sherwood, and David Colden Murray, Robert Sherwood, and Thaddeus Lane. Our house is full, and Roxana and her assistants are in great feather getting up feasts. We are to be married at twelve o'clock, and at two leave for Mount Vernon and New York via Springfield. And perhaps we shall reach the Mammoth Cave.

"For our real wedding journey, however, John will take me to the "West Indies, where he has an important lawsuit to take care of. Is not that a most original, delightful programme? Who ever went to the West Indies before on a bridal tour? We hope you will come to our wedding reception in New York. It will be on December 1, just before we sail. Etc., etc. "Ever thine,M. E."

A light fall of snow through which the sun shone lighted up the morning hour. Dr. Ingersoll, a dear and witty friend, said, "Nature has paid you the prettiest of compliments; she has put on a wedding-veil."

We went on the 8th of December to Bermuda by a little propeller which was the most uncomfortable craft I ever have sailed on. It was called the Merlin, but had left all enchantment behind. The smell of the galley came aft, freighted with the odor of roasted onions. On board were many residents of those islands going home after a summer in the States, and with one of them we formed a friendship destined to have a most beneficial result on our winter's residence in Santa Cruz. This was the Reverend Mr. Hawley, the rector of the church at Bassin, who asked us to share his house there, as the hotel was most primitive, and we did so gladly, later on.

Bermuda is beautiful, with its turquoise waters, its oleander-trees, its white cottages of stone with yellow roofs, and its swell English regiment, its lilies, and