“My stars! that parson is powerful slow a-coming! I reckon he wa’n’t so tedious gitting to his own wedding as he is coming here,” said one of the bridesmaids of Miss Polly Peablossom, as she bit her lips to make them rosy, and peeped into a small looking-glass for the twentieth time.
“He preaches enough about the shortness of a lifetime,” remarked another pouting miss, “and how we ought to improve our opportunities, not to be creeping along like a snail, when a whole wedding-party is waiting for him and the waffles are getting cold, and the chickens burning to a crisp.”
“Have patience, girls. Maybe the man’s lost his spurs, and can’t get along any faster,” was the consolatory appeal of an arch-looking damsel, as she finished the last of a bunch of grapes.
“Or perhaps his old fox-eared horse has jumped out of the pasture, and the old gentleman has to take it afoot,” surmised the fourth bridesmaid.
The bride used industrious efforts to appear patient and rather indifferent amid the general restiveness of her aids, and would occasionally affect extreme merriment; but her shrewd attendants charged her with being fidgety and rather more uneasy than she wanted folks to believe.
“Helloo, Floyd!” shouted old Captain Peablossom, out of doors, to his copperas-trousered son, who was entertaining the young beaux of the neighbourhood with feats of agility in jumping with weights—“Floyd, throw down them rocks, and put the bridle on old Snip, and ride down the road and see if you can’t see Parson Gympsey, and tell him hurry along: we are all waiting for him. He must think weddings are like his meetings, that can be put off to the ‘Sunday after the fourth Saturday in next month,’ after the crowd’s all gathered and ready to hear the preaching. If you don’t meet him, go clean to his house. I ’spect he’s heard that Bushy Creek Ned’s here with his fiddle, and taken a scare.”
As the night was wearing on, and no parson had come yet to unite the destinies of George Washington Hodgkins and “the amiable and accomplished” Miss Polly Peablossom, the former individual intimated to his intended the propriety of passing off the time by having a dance.
Polly asked her ma, and her ma, after arguing that it was not the fashion in her time, in North Car’lina, to dance before the ceremony, at last consented.
The artist from Bushy Creek was called in, and, after much tuning and spitting on the screws, he struck up “Money Musk”; and away went the country-dance, Polly Peablossom at the head, with Thomas Jefferson Hodgkins as her partner, and George Washington Hodgkins next, with Polly’s sister Luvisa for his partner. Polly danced to every gentleman, and Thomas Jefferson danced to every lady; then up and down in the middle, and hands all round. Next came George Washington and his partner, who underwent the same process; and “so on through the whole,” as Daboll’s Arithmetic says.
The yard was lit up by three or four large light-wood fires, which gave a picturesque appearance to the groups outside. On one side of the house was Daniel Newman Peablossom and a bevy of youngsters, who either could not or did not desire to get into the dance—probably the former—and who amused themselves by jumping and wrestling. On the other side, a group of matrons sat under the trees, in chairs, and discoursed of the mysteries of making butter, curing chickens of the pip and children of the croup, besides lamenting the misfortunes of some neighbour, or the indiscretion of some neighbour’s daughter who had run away and married a circus-rider. A few pensive couples, eschewing the “giddy dance,” promenaded the yard and admired the moon, or “wondered if all them little stars were worlds like this.” Perhaps they may have sighed sentimentally at the folly of the mosquitoes and bugs which were attracted round the fires to get their pretty little wings scorched and lose their precious lives; or they may have talked of “true love,” and plighted their vows, for aught we know.
Old Captain Peablossom and his pipe, during the while, were the centre of a circle in front of the house, who had gathered around the old man’s arm-chair to listen to his “twice-told tales” of “hair-breadth ’scapes,” of “the battles and sieges he had passed”; for, you must know, the captain was no “summer soldier and sunshine patriot”: he had burned gunpowder in defence of his beloved country.
At the especial request of Squire Tompkins, the captain narrated the perilous adventures of Newnan’s little band among the Seminoles: how “bold Newnan” and his men lived on alligator-flesh and parched corn and marched barefooted through saw-palmetto; how they met Bowlegs and his warriors near Paine’s Prairie, and what fighting was there. The amusing incident of Bill Cone and the terrapin-shell raised shouts of laughter among the young brood, who had flocked around to hear of the wars. Bill (the “Camden Bard,” peace to his ashes!), as the captain familiarly called him, was sitting one day against the logs of the breastwork, drinking soup out of a terrapin-shell, when a random shot from the enemy broke the shell and spilt his soup, whereupon he raised his head over the breastwork and sung out, “Oh you villain! you couldn’t do that again if you tried forty times.” Then the captain, after repeated importunities, laid down his pipe, cleared his throat, and sung:
After calling out for a chunk of fire and relighting his pipe, he dashed at once over into Alabama, in General Floyd’s army, and fought the battles of Calebee and Otassee over again in detail. The artillery from Baldwin County blazed away, and made the little boys aforesaid think they could hear thunder, almost, and the rifles from Putnam made their patriotic young spirits long to revenge that gallant corps. And the squire was astonished at the narrow escape his friend had of falling into the hands of Weatherford and his savages, when he was miraculously rescued by Timpoochie Barnard, the Uchee chief.
At this stage of affairs, Floyd (not the general, but the ambassador) rode up, with a mysterious look on his countenance. The dancers left off in the middle of a set, and assembled around the messenger, to hear the news of the parson. The old ladies crowded up too, and the captain and the squire were eager to hear. But Floyd felt the importance of his situation, and was in no hurry to divest himself of the momentary dignity.
“Well, as I rode on down to Boggy Gut, I saw—”
“Who care what the devil you saw?” exclaimed the impatient captain. “Tell us if the parson is coming first, and you may take all night to tell the balance, if you like, afterwards.”
“I saw—” continued Floyd pertinaciously.
“Well, my dear, what did you see?” asked Mrs. Peablossom.
“I saw that some one had tooken away some of the rails on the cross-way, or they had washed away, or somehow—”
“Did anybody ever hear the like?” said the captain.
“And so I got down,” continued Floyd, “and hunted some more, and fixed over the boggy place—”
Here Polly laid her hand on his arm and requested, with a beseeching look, to know if the parson was on the way.
“I’ll tell you all about it presently, Polly. And when I got to the run of the creek, then—”
“Oh, the devil!” ejaculated Captain Peablossom. “Stalled again!”
“Be still, honey; let the child tell it in his own way. He always would have his way, you know, since we had to humour him so when he had the measles,” interposed the old lady.
Daniel Newnan Peablossom, at this juncture, facetiously lay down on the ground, with the root of an old oak for his pillow, and called out yawningly to his pa to “wake him when brother Floyd had crossed over the run of the creek and arrived safely at the parson’s.” This caused loud laughter.
Floyd simply noticed it by observing to his brother, “Yes, you think you’re mighty smart before all these folks!” and resumed his tedious route to Parson Gympsey’s, with as little prospect of reaching the end of his story as ever.
Mrs. Peablossom tried to coax him to “jest” say if the parson was coming or not. Polly begged him, and all the bridesmaids implored. But Floyd “went on his way rejoicing,” “When I came to the Piney Flat,” he continued, “old Snip seed something white over in the baygall, and shied clean out o’ the road, and—” Where he would have stopped would be hard to say, if the impatient captain had not interfered.
That gentleman, with a peculiar glint of the eye, remarked, “Well, there’s one way I can bring him to a showing,” as he took a large horn from between the logs, and rung a “wood-note wild,” that set a pack of hounds to yelping. A few more notes, as loud as those that issued from “Roland’s horn at Roncesvalles,” was sufficient invitation to every hound, foist, and “cur of low degree,” that followed the guests, to join in the chorus. The captain was a man of good lungs, and “the way he did blow was the way,” as Squire Tompkins afterwards very happily describe it; and, as there were in the canine choir some thirty voices of every key, the music may be imagined better than described. Miss Tabitha Tidwell, the first bridesmaid, put her hands to her ears and cried out, “My stars! we shall all git blowed away!”
The desired effect of abbreviating the messenger’s story was produced, as that prolix personage in copperas pants was seen to take Polly aside and whisper something in her ear.
“Oh Floyd, you are joking! you oughtn’t to serve me so. An’t you joking, bud?” asked Polly, with a look that seemed to beg he would say yes.
“It’s true as preaching,” he replied: “the cake’s all dough!”
Polly whispered something to her mother, who threw up her hands, and exclaimed, “Oh my!” and then whispered the secret to some other lady, and away it went. Such whispering and throwing up of hands and eyes is rarely seen at a Quaker meeting. Consternation was in every face. Poor Polly was a very personification of “Patience on a monument, smiling at green and yellow Melancholy.”
The captain, discovering that something was the matter, drove off the dogs, and inquired what had happened to cause such confusion. “What the devil’s the matter now?” he said. “You all look as down in the mouth as we did on the Santafee when the quartermaster said the provisions had all give out. What’s the matter? Won’t somebody tell me? Old ’oman, has the dogs got into the kitchen and eat up all the supper? or what else has come to pass? Out with it!”
“Ah, old man, bad news!” said the wife, with a sigh.
“Well, what is it? You are all getting as bad as Floyd, terrifying a fellow to death.”
“Parson Gympsey was digging a new horse-trough, and cut his leg to the bone with a foot-adze and can’t come. Oh, dear!”
“I wish he had taken a fancy to ’a’ done it a week ago, so we mout ’a’ got another parson; or, as long as no other time would suit but to-day, I wish he had cut his derned eternal head off!”
“Oh, my! husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Peablossom. Bushy Creek Ned, standing in the piazza with his fiddle, struck up the old tune of
Ned’s hint caused a movement towards the dancing-room among the young people, when the captain, as if waking from a reverie, exclaimed, in a loud voice, “Oh, the devel! what are we all thinking of? Why, here’s Squire Tompkins; he can perform the ceremony. If a man can’t marry folks, what’s the use of being squire at all?”
Manna did not come in better time to the children of Israel in the wilderness than did this discovery of the worthy captain to the company assembled. It was as vivifying as a shower of rain on corn that is about to shoot and tassel, especially to G. W. Hodgkins and his lady-love.
Squire Tompkins was a newly-elected magistrate, and some-what diffident of his abilities in this untried department. He expressed a hint of the sort, which the captain only noticed with the exclamation, “Hoot, toot!”
Mrs. Peablossom insinuated to her husband that in her day the “quality,” or better sort of people, in North Car’lina, had a prejudice ag’in’ being married by a magistrate; to which the old gentleman replied, “None of your nonsense, old lady; none of your Duplin County aristocracy about here now. The better sort of people, I think you say! Now, you know North Car’lina ain’t the best State in the Union, no how, and Duplin’s the poorest county in the State. Better sort of people, is it? Quality, eh? Who the devil’s better than we are? Ain’t we honest? Ain’t we raised our children decent, and learned them how to read, write, and cipher? Ain’t I fou’t under Newnan and Floyd for the country? Why, darn it! we are the very best sort of people. Stuff! nonsense! The wedding shall go on; Polly shall have a husband.”
Mrs. P.’s eyes lit up, her cheek flushed, as she heard “the old North State” spoken of so disparagingly; but she was a woman of good sense, and reserved the castigation for a future curtain lecture.
Things were soon arranged for the wedding; and as the old wooden clock on the mantelpiece struck one, the bridal party were duly arranged on the floor, and the crowd gathered round, eager to observe every twinkle of the bridgroom’s eye and every blush of the blooming bride.
The bridesmaids and their male attendants were arranged in couples, as in a cotillon, to form a hollow square, in the centre of which were the squire and betrothing parties. Each of the attendants bore a candle; Miss Tabitha held hers in a long brass candlestick which had belonged to Polly’s grandmother, in shape and length somewhat resembling Cleopatra’s Needle; Miss Luvisa bore a flat tin one; the third attendant bore such an article as is usually suspended on a nail against the wall; and the fourth had a curiously-devised something cut out of wood with a pocket-knife. For want of a further supply of candlesticks, the male attendants held naked candles in their hands. Polly was dressed in white, and wore a bay flower with its green leaves in her hair, and the whisper went round, “Now don’t she look pretty?” George Washington Hodgkins rejoiced in a white satin stock and a vest and pantaloons of orange colour; the vest was straight-collared, like a Continental officer’s in the Revolution, and had eagle buttons on it. They were a fine-looking couple.
When everything was ready, a pause ensued, and all eyes were turned on the squire, who seemed to be undergoing a mental agony such as Fourth-of-July orators feel when they forget their speeches, or a boy at an exhibition when he has to be prompted from behind the scenes. The truth was, Squire Tompkins was a man of forms, but had always taken them from form-books, and never trusted his memory. On this occasion he had no “Georgia Justice” or any other book from which to read the marriage ceremony, and was at a loss how to proceed. He thought over everything he had ever learned “by heart,” even to
but all in vain; he could recollect nothing that suited such an occasion. A suppressed titter all over the room admonished him that he must proceed with something, and, in the agony of desperation, he began:
“Know all men by these presents that I—” Here he paused, and looked up to the ceiling, while an audible voice in a corner of the room was heard to say, “He’s drawing up a deed to a tract of land,” and they all laughed.
“In the name of God, Amen!” he began a second time, only to hear another voice, in a loud whisper, say, “He’s making his will, now. I thought he couldn’t live long, he looks so powerful bad.”
was the next essay, when some erudite gentleman remarked, “He is not dead, but sleepeth.”
“O yes! O yes!” continued the squire. One voice replied, “Oh, no! oh, no! don’t let’s”; another whispered, “No bail!” Some person out of doors sang out, “Come into court!” and the laughter was general. The bridesmaids spilt the tallow from their candles all over the floor, in the vain attempt to look serious. One of them had a red mark on her lip for a month afterwards, where she had bit it. The bridegroom put his hands in his pockets, and took them out again; the bride looked as if she would faint; and so did the squire.
But the squire was an indefatigable man, and kept trying. His next effort was:
“To all and singular the sher—” “Let’s run! he’s going to level on us,” said two or three at once.
Here a gleam of light flashed across the face of Squire Tompkins. That dignitary looked around all at once, with as much satisfaction as Archimedes could have felt when he discovered the method of ascertaining the specific gravity of bodies. In a grave and dignified manner, he said, “Mr. Hodgkins, hold up your right hand.” George Washington obeyed, and held up his hand. “Miss Polly, hold up yours.” Polly in confusion held up her left hand. “The other hand, Miss Peablossom.” And the squire proceeded, in a loud and composed manner, to qualify them: “You and each of you do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God and the present company, that you will perform toward each other all and singular the functions of husband and wife, as the case may be, to the best of your knowledge and ability, so help you God!”
“Good as wheat!” said Captain Peablossom. “Polly, my gal, come and kiss your old father: I never felt so happy since the day I was discharged from the army and set out homeward to see your mother.”