e now forced to
devote a large part of their lives to acting as brides, grooms, ushers
and bridesmaids at various elaborate nuptials. Weeks are generally
required in preparation for an up-to-date wedding; months are necessary
in recovering from such an affair. Indeed, some of the participants,
notably the bride and groom, never quite get over the effects of a
marriage.

It was not "always thus." Time was when the wedding was a comparatively
simple affair. In the Paleolithic Age, for example, (as Mr. H. G. Wells
of England points out in his able "Outline of History"), there is no
evidence of any particular ceremony conjunctive with the marriage of
"a male and a female." Even with the advent of Neolithic man, a wedding
seems to have been consummated by the rather simple process of having
the bridegroom crack the bride over the head with a plain, unornamented
stone ax. There were no ushers--no bridesmaids. But shortly after that
(c- 10,329--30 B.C. to be exact) two young Neoliths named Haig, living
in what is now supposed to be Scotland, discovered that the prolonged
distillation of common barley resulted in the creation of an
amber-colored liquid which, when taken internally, produced a curious
and not unpleasant effect.

This discovery had--and still has--a remarkable effect upon the
celebration of the marriage rite. Gradually there grew up around the
wedding a number of customs. With the Haig brothers' discovery of Scotch
whiskey began, as a matter of course, the institution of the "bachelor
dinner." "Necessity is the mother of invention," and exactly twelve
years after the first "bachelor dinner" came the discovery of
bicarbonate of soda. From that time down to the present day the history
of the etiquette of weddings has been that of an increasing number of
intricate forms and ceremonies, each age having added its particular bit
of ritual. The modern wedding may be said to be, therefore, almost an
"Outline of History" itself.

ANNOUNCING THE ENGAGEMENT

LET us begin, first of all, with the duties of one of the minor
characters at a wedding--the Groom. Suppose that you are an eligible
young man named Richard Roe, who has just become "engaged" to a young
lady named Dorothy Doe. If you really intend to "marry the girl," it is
customary that some formal announcement of the engagement be made, for
which you must have the permission of Miss Dorothy and her father. It
is not generally difficult to become engaged to mos