Page:An authentic narrative of the extraordinary career of James Allen, the female husband.djvu/17

 about to practise upon a young and confiding girl, none can tell; but his surviving associate states, that she conceived herself, on the day preceding that which was to seal her fate for ever, the happiest of women—being about to unite her destiny to one so young, so handsome, so corresponding in age with herself, and whose habits of industry were so eminently calculated to ensure her permanent happiness and respectability in society. On the following morning they started for church, accompanied by one or two private friends, and the marriage was duly performed. Certainly to a reflecting mind nothing can be more revolting than the idea of one fellow-creature, at the altar of a church, and in the presence of his Creator, pledging himself to another in a fictitious character, and particularly during that solemn injunction which requires them to declare, before the knot is indissolubly tied, that if either know of any lawful impediment to the marriage, that they then and there fully make known the same, as they shall answer the contrary upon the great day of judgment. What must have been the frame of mind of James Allen at that moment, when commiting [sic] so irreparable a fraud, under such solemn circumstances, is, upon reflection, a matter of astonishment and regret. Strong indeed must have been that mind, and the motives with which it must have been actuated, to have induced a rational being to have risked a measure at once so unnatural and so unwarrantable, with every possible chance against its success. Braving all this, however, he did so risk it: how well he supported the deception the reader will learn in the sequel.

After the ceremony was performed the new married couple, as is usual, partook of a wedding dinner, together with a select number of their friends. The evening was spent with the greatest hilarity, by all except the bridegroom, who appeared far from en-