ulpit, to find
only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods
were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest
woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep and
tender musing.

And--strange enough for a young man who rides only to exercise his black
mare--he never came out of those woods without an armful of columbine or
the like. And--strange enough for any young man in this world of strange
things--when he sat down at the table of Mrs. Des Anges, in her pleasant
house near Harlem Creek, Miss Aline Des Anges wore a bunch of those
columbines at her throat. Miss Aline Des Anges was a slim girl, not very
tall, with great dark eyes that followed some people with a patient
wistfulness.

* * * * *

One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob found his father in the
breakfast-room, and said to him:

"Father, I am going to marry Aline Des Anges."

His father, who had been dozing in the sun by the south window, raised
his eyes to his son's face with a kindly, blank look, and said,
thoughtfully:

"Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob, and a wonderful woman, Madam
Des Anges. Is she alive yet?"

* * * * *

When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and strong and well, heard of
this, she said:

"It is the etiquette of France that one family should make the
proposition to the other family. Under the circumstances _I_ will be the
family that proposes. I will make a precedent. The Des Anges make
precedents."

And she rode down to the Dolph house in the family carriage--the last
time it ever went out--and made her "proposition" to Jacob Dolph the
elder, and he brightened up most wonderfully, until you would have
thought him quite his old self, and he told her what an honor he
esteemed the alliance, and paid her compliments a hundred words long.

And in May of the next year, King's Bridge being out of the question,
and etiquette being waived at the universal demand of society, the young
couple stood up in the drawing-room of the Dolph house to be wed.

The ceremony was fashionably late--seven o'clock in the evening. And
after it was over, and the young couple had digested what St. Paul had
to say about the ordinance of wedlock, and had inaudibly promised to do
and be whatever the domine required of them, they were led by the
half-dozen groomsmen to the long glass between the front windows, and
m