y
ring at the door-bell appears the maid with a fresh parcel wrapped in
snow-white paper fastened with a dainty ribbon, and on each occasion my
dear Josie's eyes sparkle more excitedly as she clutches it and frees
it from its caparisons. And ever and anon I am struck by the fact that
she is growing thin and pale. I mention it to Josephine, but she tells
me that girls always get peaked before their weddings, and that she
herself was thin as a rail at the time she married me. I get no
sympathy anywhere. My sole connection with the matter is that I am to
give the bride away.

I did so yesterday in the presence of our entire social acquaintance
and their dressmakers, most of whom I subsequently entertained at a
mid-day collation, where I shook hands with a vast array of young
people whom I did not know, and tried to keep up my spirits by asking
my old friends to take wine with me. It was after the third glass that
the spirit moved me to address my new son-in-law as "Jim." An hour
later I saw the young rascal carry off my Josie in a carriage with an
air as though he owned her, and I could have strangled him. At the
same moment I was unpleasantly conscious that a quantity of rice hurled
by an enthusiastic miss of nineteen was going down my back. I made a
mad rush forward like a bull; I don't know exactly what I had in mind
to do, but I was bunted aside by a youth who, I am sure, could never
have had a father and mother. He held an old shoe in his hand, which
he proceeded to cast with such unerring aim that it landed on the top
of the bridal coach, to the infinite delight of everybody except
myself. I could see no especial humor in it, but Josephine tells me
that we underwent precisely the same experience at our own wedding and
thought it amusing. I perceive that it makes considerable difference
in this world whose ox is gored, or, to put it more accurately, whether
one is carrying off some other man's daughter or is being robbed of his
own.

And now to crown all, I am haunted by the vision of Winona and that
tall, handsome, impressive-looking young man in whose company I met her
the other day about dusk. In saying to Josephine that I had told her
all, I did not speak the truth in a certain sense. I did tell her all
I knew, but I did not confide to her all that I suspected. I did not
reveal to her that at the moment my eye fell upon them my only
remaining daughter was gazing up into the face of her male compani