and a number of
women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their
noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines.
One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and
applies it dexterously while pretending to blow her nose.

The bridegroom in the vestry-room, entering upon the second year (or is
it the third?) of his long and ghastly wait, grows increasingly nervous,
and when he hears the organist pass from the Spring Song into some more
sonorous and stately thing he mistakes it for the wedding march from
"Lohengrin," and is hot for marching upon the altar at once. The best
man, an old hand, restrains him gently, and administers another sedative
from the bottle. The bridegroom's thoughts turn to gloomy things. He
remembers sadly that he will never be able to laugh at benedicts again;
that his days of low, rabelaisian wit and care-free scoffing are over;
that he is now the very thing he mocked so gaily but yesteryear. Like a
drowning man, he passes his whole life in review--not, however, that
part which is past, but that part which is to come. Odd fancies throng
upon him. He wonders what his honeymoon will cost him, what there will
be to drink at the wedding breakfast, what a certain girl in Chicago
will say when she hears of his marriage. Will there be any children? He
rather hopes not, for all those he knows appear so greasy and noisy, but
he decides that he might conceivably compromise on a boy. But how is he
going to make sure that it will not be a girl? The thing, as yet, is a
medical impossibility--but medicine is making rapid strides. Why not
wait until the secret is discovered? This sapient compromise pleases the
bridegroom, and he proceeds to a consideration of various problems of
finance. And then, of a sudden, the organist swings unmistakably into
"Lohengrin" and the best man grabs him by the arm.

There is now great excitement in the church. The bride's mother, two
sisters, three brothers and three sisters-in-law have just marched up
the center aisle and taken seats in the front pew, and all the women in
the place are craning their necks toward the door. The usual electrical
delay ensues. There is something the matter with the bride's train, and
the two bridesmaids have a deuce of a time fixing it. Meanwhile the
bride's father, in tight pantaloons and tighter gloves, fidgets and
fumes in the vestibule, the six ushers crowd about him inanely, and the