my request before Judge Sturgis of the District Court.

The judge knew Don Carlos and (as a reader of the magazines) had some
knowledge of me; therefore he at once declared his willingness to
assist. "It will be an honor," he added heartily; "I'll adjourn court if
necessary. You may depend on me."

He also agreed to meet our wishes as to the character of the ceremony.
"I'll make it as short as you like," he said. "I'll reduce it to its
lowest legal terms," and with this understanding I procured my license
and returned to Hanover.

In spite of all these practical details the whole adventure seemed
curiously unreal, as though it concerned some other individual, some
character in one of my novels. It was a play in which I acted as manager
rather than as leading man. There was nothing in all this preparation
which remotely suggested any of the weddings in which I had been
concerned as witness, and I suspect that Zulime was almost equally
unconvinced of its reality. Poor girl! It was all as far from the
wedding of her girlish dreams as her bridegroom fell short of the
silver-clad knight of romance, but I promised her that she would find
something grandiose and colorful in our wedding journey. "Our wedding
will be prosaic, but wait until you see the sunset light on the
Crestones! Our week in the High Country shall be a poem."

This was a characteristic attitude with me. I was always saying, "Wait!
These flowers _are_ lovely, but those just ahead of us are more
beautiful still." Zulime's attitude, as I soon discovered, was precisely
opposite: "Let us make the most of the flowers at our hand," was her
motto.

The Taft home had something of the same unesthetic quality which marked
Neshonoc. It was simple, comfortable, and entirely New England.
Throughout the stern vicissitudes of his life on the Middle Border, Don
Carlos Taft had carried the memories and the accents of his New
Hampshire town. His beginnings had been as laboriously difficult as
those of my father. In many ways they were alike; that is to say, they
were both Yankee in training and tradition.

At last the epoch-marking day came marching across the eastern plain.
The inevitable bustle began with the dawn. I packed my trunk and
dispatched it to the station in confident expectation of our
mid-afternoon departure, and Zulime did the same, although it must have
seemed more illusory to her than to me. The Judge arrived precisely at
noon, and at half-past twelve th