ing in such a case. Nevertheless, I may relate some things
I have seen, to show how badly a couple may start in life. Here is one
instance: The dust has filled the air for six blocks around some stately
church. The "hacks" and private barouches and coupes have been packed
together so that any movement was entirely impossible; the bride has
come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the
vestibule; there she has passed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way
down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a
smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a
pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist
has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory
of God most mighty, instead of the folly of man most miserable. Into the
church have thronged the elect, proud and disdainful; on the outside has
stared the vulgar multitude, too ignorant for anything but rapt
wonderment. From the temple of high-priced worship the celebrants have
passed, in a still more exclusive body, to a residence where a banquet
has been prepared by a man who generally makes ice cream for a living,
and where a dazzling display of wedding presents has been uncovered to
the careless gaze. Then the train bears away the twain of one foolish
flesh, and the farce is over.

OF COURSE IT WAS A FARCE.

The elect read the newspapers next morning with a smile. None but he of
the vulgar multitude was hoodwinked. The man and the woman have spent
all their money to purchase a "swell wedding." The presents were hired,
so were most of the "hacks." The florist has got part of his money. The
couple, six months afterward, are "beating" some poor landlady out of
their board, and the man, in all likelihood, will never again be heard
of. But the women have been intensely agitated by the event. They have
never thought about the subsequent aspects of the case.

NO ONE OF THE SAME "SET"

would be willing to spare a single "hack" or one double camellia. Why
did the young man and the young woman do it? They did it principally out
of vanity, in imitation of some rich person who desired to distribute
his money among hard-working folks and at the same time create a
feeling of envy among his fellows and "please the women folk."

LET US HAVE THE MANHOOD AND THE WOMANHOOD,

if we have five hundred or a thousand dollars, to buy those necessaries
of life which will enable us to liv