tle compared
with the marvel of the years ahead, whose threshold he was now about to
cross, and not alone.

A day or two before the wedding he was asked to lecture on the night of
February 2d. He replied that he was sorry to disappoint the applicant,
but that he could not lecture on the night of February 2d, for the
reason that he was going to marry a young lady on that evening, and that
he would rather marry that young lady than deliver all the lectures in
the world.

And so came the wedding-day. It began pleasantly; the postman brought a
royalty check that morning of $4,000, the accumulation of three months'
sales, and the Rev. Joseph Twichell and Harmony, his wife, came
from Hartford--Twichell to join with the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in
solemnizing the marriage. Pamela Moffett, a widow now, with her daughter
Annie, grown to a young lady, had come all the way from St. Louis, and
Mrs. Fairbanks from Cleveland.

Yet the guests were not numerous, not more than a hundred at most, so
it was a quiet wedding there in the Langdon parlors, those dim, stately
rooms that in the future would hold so much of his history--so much of
the story of life and death that made its beginning there.

The wedding-service was about seven o'clock, for Mr. Beecher had a
meeting at the church soon after that hour. Afterward followed the
wedding-supper and dancing, and the bride's father danced with the
bride. To the interested crowd awaiting him at the church Mr. Beecher
reported that the bride was very beautiful, and had on the longest
white gloves he had ever seen; he declared they reached to her
shoulders.--[Perhaps for a younger generation it should be said that
Thomas K. Beecher was a brother of Henry Ward Beecher. He lived and
died in Elmira, the almost worshiped pastor of the Park Congregational
Church. He was a noble, unorthodox teacher. Samuel Clemens at the time
of his marriage already strongly admired him, and had espoused his
cause in an article signed "S'cat!" in the Elmira Advertiser, when he
(Beecher) had been assailed by the more orthodox Elmira clergy. For the
"S'cat" article see Appendix I, at the end of last volume.]

It was the next afternoon when they set out for Buffalo, accompanied by
the bride's parents, the groom's relatives, the Beechers, and perhaps
one or two others of that happy company. It was nine o'clock at night
when they arrived, and found Mr. Slee waiting at the station with
sleighs to convey the party to