The Project Gutenberg EBook of Their Wedding Journey, by William Dean Howells

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Title: Their Wedding Journey

Author: William Dean Howells

Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #3365]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY ***

Produced by David Widger

THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY

By William Dean Howells

Contents:

The Outset
A Midsummer-day's Dream
The Night Boat
A Day's Railroading
The Enchanted City, and Beyond
Niagara
Down the St. Lawrence
The Sentiment of Montreal
Homeward and Home
Niagara Revisited Twelve Years after Their Wedding

THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY

By William Dean Howells

1871

I. THE OUTSET

They first met in Boston, but the match was made in Europe, where they
afterwards saw each other; whither, indeed, he followed her; and there
the match was also broken off. Why it was broken off, and why it was
renewed after a lapse of years, is part of quite a long love-story, which
I do not think myself qualified to rehearse, distrusting my fitness for a
sustained or involved narration; though I am persuaded that a skillful
romancer could turn the courtship of Basil and Isabel March to excellent
account. Fortunately for me, however, in attempting to tell the reader of
the wedding-journey of a newly married couple, no longer very young, to
be sure, but still fresh in the light of their love, I shall have nothing
to do but to talk of some ordinary traits of American life as these
appeared to them, to speak a little of well-known and easily accessible
places, to present now a bit of landscape and now a sketch of character.

They had agreed to make their wedding-journey in the simplest and
quietest way, and as it did not take place at once after their marriage,
but some weeks later, it had all the desired charm of privacy from the
outset.

"How much better," said Isabel, "to go now, when nobody cares whether you
go or stay, than to have started off upon a wretched wedding-breakfast,
all tears and trousseau, and had people wanting to see you aboard the
cars. Now there will not be a suspicion of