United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On this occasion God acted like the king who, discovering on the day of his daughter's wedding that the best-man was guilty of a deadly sin, said: "If I cause the best-man to be executed on the spot, I shall cast a shadow on my daughter's joy. I will rather have him executed on my day of gladness than on hers."
The gardens of the city's fashionable homes boasted no extensive circular fountains or artificial fishponds into which the best-man or the father of the bride-to-be could be flung as an artistic diversion. As has been said, it was something of a slow old world, lacking in many of the modern comforts.
With laugh and light jest they pushed on merrily over the stiles and through the brown autumn grass, covered with a lacework of cobwebs. The ceremony passed off well enough, except that Billy, as best-man, made the old arches of the church echo again with his response. Absalom had taken a cottage of Farmer Humphreys.
First of all there was the business of getting married. It was with an idea of permanency then, and the Knickerbocker wedding was, in consequence, a ceremony. To it, the groom, his best-man, and the ushers went attired in blue coats, brass buttons, high white satin stocks, ruffled-bosomed shirts, figured satin waistcoats, silk stockings, and pumps.
"I congratulate you, Jenkins, with all my heart," said Dan, grasping the seaman's flipper, and giving it a hearty shake. "So now, I must look out for another best-man. Morel will do for me, I think, and you can have my brother Peter, no doubt. But could we not manage to have both weddings on the same day?" "Impossible," answered the seaman, promptly. "Couldn't wait."
"Unpossible quite unpossible," interrupted the seaman with a grave shake of the head. "How impossible!" "Ab-so-lutely unpossible." "But why? Explain yourself, Fred." "'Cause it's only a bachelor as can be a best-man to a bachelor ain't it?" "I believe so, though I'm no authority in such matters; but surely that is a matter of no importance, for you are a bachelor, you know."
Garth was as anxious about his wedding garments, as Jane had been indifferent over hers; but he had so often been in requisition as best-man at town weddings, that Simpson had no difficulty in turning him out in the acme of correct bridal attire.
On this occasion there was no bartering with a village headman. There was a fine middle- class wedding in the country, with a stout Papa and a weeping Mamma, and a best-man in purple and fine linen, and six snub-nosed girls from the Sunday School to throw roses on the path between the tombstones up to the Church door.
His grandfather, his mother's father, was a "volunteer"-boy, preparing to be midshipman, on the Serapis, and he knew he had heard him speak of Duval! Oh, how we all screamed! It was so like Ingham! Haliburton asked him if his grandfather was not best-man when Denis married Agnes. Fausta asked him if he would not continue the novel in the "Cornhill."
The sailor agreed with effusive heartiness to all that he said, and Dan thought while he was speaking orating as one of the American settlers would have expressed it that Jenkins wore a peculiar expression on his manly countenance. Attributing it to unusual interest in the event, he continued "Now, Fred, I want you to be my best-man "
Word Of The Day