that the ceremony had begun, he told his
crippled friend to sit still until he came back for him, and, by lighting
a series of wax matches, found his way back to the front door of the
church, and strode up the aisle dishevelled, and with a smutty forehead,
just as Papa Penney had succeeded in breaking through the bridesmaids,
dragging Fannie with him. A sigh of relief arose. The couple stepped
forward and the ceremony began. When, however, the giving away time came,
it was found that Papa Penney had retreated to a pew, from which he could
not be dislodged. Another hitch was only averted by the groom turning
pleasantly toward his father-in-law, and saying, with a wave of his hand,
"It's all right, don't trouble to move; you said 'I do,' I think; the
Parson understands." The ceremony was ended without further complication.
When Fannie walked out upon the arm of the self-possessed Liberty, I
thought that the travelling man had the makings of a hero in him after
all. It afterward transpired that the hapless best man, left in the coal
cellar, and not missed until the party was halfway home, had only
wrenched his ankle, and made his escape to the village tavern for
consolation, proving that even commercial travellers may be upset by a
fashionable wedding ceremony.

X

THE WHIRL BEGINS

_May 30_. The People of the Whirlpool have come to the Bluffs, and the
swirl and spray has, in a measure, followed them. I had well-nigh
written, "are settled at the Bluffs," but the Whirlpoolers are perpetual
migrants, unlike the feathered birds of passage never absolutely settling
anywhere even for the nesting season, sometimes even taking to the water
by preference, at the time, of all others, when home is most loved and
cherished by the "comfortably poor."

The houses, nominally closed since the holidays, have been reopened, one
by one, ever since the general return from the south in April, after
which season, Mrs. Jenks-Smith assures me, it is bad form to be seen in
New York on Sunday.

This fiat, however, does not prevent members of almost every family from
spending several days a week in the city, thus protecting themselves
against the possible monotony of home living by lunching and dining,
either singly or in informal groups, at the public restaurants.

Father has always held the theory that ladies should dress
inconspicuously in the public streets and hostelries, and for a woman to
do otherwise, he considered, was to pr