and went up head
downwards about twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon
could not haul him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and
the bride would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had
always been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go
this time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went
on with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the ceremony
was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without seriously
damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two afterwards, the bride
wanted to get her divorce, the court held that there had never been any
marriage, for the reason that both the groom and the bride had not
appeared together in the presence of the officiating minister, and that,
furthermore, there was no provision in the law which would permit a man
to be married upside down.

[Illustration: "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."]

"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the
boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda
Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain side with
her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married, but
her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a Republican and a
Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and, naturally,
they hated each other like poison, and one night as old man Smith and
Josiah met on their way to rival prayer meetings, they exchanged
revolver shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then once Josiah had
most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice
the Smith boys came into the sitting-room where Josiah was calling on
Melinda, and suggested to him with their shot-guns that he had better go
home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her
family was resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope
and be married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.

"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda's
window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was
always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was
going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah
had no respect for her, she had some little respect for herself. She
climbed down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she