walking through the forest we met a _Brautwagen_: the
great open cart loaded with the furniture and wedding presents the
bride was taking as part of her dowry to her new home. It would be
piled with bedding, wooden bedsteads, chests of drawers, and pots and
pans; and gay-coloured ribbons would be floating from each point of
vantage. Sometimes the bridal pair was with the cart, the young
husband in his wedding clothes walking beside the horse, the bride
seated amongst her possessions. Sometimes a couple of men in working
clothes, probably the bridegroom and a friend, were carrying the
things beforehand, so that the new home should be ready directly after
the wedding. We happened to be staying in the Black Forest when our
inn-keeper's daughter was going to marry a young doctor, the son of a
rich peasant in a neighbouring valley, and we were asked to the
wedding. Our landlord ran two inns, the one in which we stayed and
another a dozen miles away, which was managed by his wife and
daughters. The wife's hotel was in a fashionable watering-place, and
offered a smarter background for a wedding than the one in our
out-of-the-world little town. It is the proper moment now for you to
object that this could not have been a "peasant" wedding at all, and
has no place in a picture of peasant life; and I concede that the
bride and bridegroom, their parents, and certain of their friends all
wore _staedtische Kleider_. The bride was in black silk, and the
bridegroom in his professional black coat. But nearly all the guests
were peasants, and wore peasant costume; and the heavy long-spun
festivities were those usual at a peasant's wedding. We started with
our bicycles at six o'clock in the morning, and soon found ourselves
in a straggling procession of carts and pedestrians come from all the
valleys round. The main road was like a road on a fair day. Everyone
knew that there was to be a _Hochzeit_ at R., a big splendid
_Hochzeit_, and everyone who could afford the time and the money was
going to eat and drink and dance at it. Everyone was in a holiday
mood, and all along the lovely forest road we exchanged greetings with
our fellow-guests and gathered scraps of information about the feast
we were on our way to join. Every inn we passed had set out extra
tables, and expected extra custom that day, and when we got to one
within a mile of R. we found the garden crowded. People were ready by
this time for their second breakfast, and were ha