and entreated God to bless him in his office, and to spare his
mother's life, and to look with favor and acceptance on the purpose of
today. Then, over the graves, he walked into his fenceless little
angular flower-garden; and here, composed and confident in the divine
keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips deeper into the mellow
earth.

But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by the
bell-ringing and the Janizary-music of wedding-gladness; the
marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were drinking
diligently; there was a clattering, a cooking, a frizzling;
tea-services, coffee-services, and warm beer-services, were advancing
in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round like
potter's frames or cistern-wheels. The Schoolmaster, with three young
lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house an _Arioso_, with which,
so soon as they were perfect, he purposed to surprise his clerical
superior. But now rushed all the arms of the foaming joy-streams into
one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms the bride, descended
upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering, humble love; when the
bells began; when the procession-column set forth with the whole village
round and before it; when the organ, the congregation, the officiating
priest, and the sparrows on the trees of the church-window, struck louder
and louder their rolling peals on the drum of the jubilee-festival.

* * * The heart of the singing bridegroom was like to leap from its
place for joy "that on his bridal-day it was all so respectable and
grand." Not till the marriage benediction could he pray a little.

Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when
pastry-work and march-pane-devices were brought forward, when glasses,
and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went
round, and when the guests rose and themselves went round, and, at
length, danced round: for they had instrumental music from the city
there.

One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of
joy: the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began
to see and hear more and more, and toward night they penetrated like a
wedge into the open door--nay, two youths ventured even in the middle
of the parsonage-court to mount a plank over a beam and commence
seesawing. Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the departed sun was
encircling the earth, the evening-star was glittering