ms's words are telling though few, and his
prayers are brief but deeply impressive, while the people, young and
middle-aged, are powerfully sympathetic. The most of the girls break
down when Adams draws to an abrupt close, and most of the youths find it
hard to behave like men.

They succeed, however, and then the wedding party goes off to have a
spell of fun.

If you had been there, reader, to behold things for yourself, it is not
improbable that some of the solemnity of the wedding would have been
scattered, (for you, at least), and some of the fun introduced too soon,
for the costumes of the chief actors were not perfect; indeed, not quite
appropriate, according to our ideas of the fitness of things.

It is not that we could object to the bare feet of nearly all the party,
for to such we are accustomed among our own poor. Neither could we find
the slightest fault with the brides. Their simple loose robes, flowing
hair, and wreaths of natural flowers, were in perfect keeping with the
beauty of their faces. But the garb of guileless Charlie Christian was
incongruous, to say the least of it. During the visit of the _Topaz_ a
few old clothes had been given by the seamen to the islanders, and
Charlie had become the proud possessor of a huge black beaver hat, which
had to be put on sidewise to prevent its settling down on the back of
his neck; also, of a blue dress-coat with brass buttons, the waist and
sleeves of which were much too short, and the tails unaccountably long;
likewise, of a pair of Wellington boots, the tops of which did not, by
four inches, reach the legs of his native trousers, and therefore
displayed that amount of brawny, well-made limbs, while the absence of a
vest and the impossibility of buttoning the coat left a broad, sunburnt
expanse of manly chest exposed to view. But such is the difference of
opinion resulting from difference of custom, that not a muscle of any
face moved when he appeared, save in open admiration, though there was
just the shade of a twinkle for one moment in the eye of John Adams, for
he had seen other, though not better, days.

Even Dan's excitable sense of the ridiculous was not touched. Himself,
indeed, was a greater guy than Charlie, for he wore a richly-flowered
vest, so tight that it would hardly button, and had been split up the
back while being put on. As he wore a shell-jacket, much too short for
him, this accident to the vest and a portion of his powerful ba