owd, Squire Vandemark," he went on
deviling me, "that you couldn't perform the marriage ceremony."

Now here he came closer to my abilities, for I had been through a
marriage ceremony lately, and I have a good memory--and oysters were a
novelty in Iowa, coming in tin cans and called cove oysters, put up in
Baltimore. It looked like a chance to stick Doc Bliven, and while I was
hesitating, Mrs. Bliven whispered that there was a form for the ceremony
in the instruction book.

"I'll bet you the oysters for the crowd I can," I said. "You furnish the
happy couple--and I'll see that you furnish the oyster supper, too."

"Any couple will do," said the doctor. "Come, Mollie, we may as well go
through it again."

The word "again" seemed suspicious. I began to wonder: and before the
ceremony was over, I reading from the book of instructions, and people
interrupting with their jokes, I saw that this meant a good deal to the
Blivens. Mollie's voice trembled as she said "I do!"; and the doctor's
hand was not steady as he took hers. I asked myself what had become of
the man who had made the attack on Bliven as he stood in line for his
mail at the Dubuque post-office away back there in 1855.

"Don't forget my certificate, Jake," said Mrs. Bliven, as they sat down;
and I had to write it out and give it to her.

"And remember the report of it to the county clerk," said Henderson L.
Burns, who held that office himself. "The Doc will kick out of the
supper unless you do everything."

I did not forget the report, and I suppose it is there in the old
records to this day.

"We got word," whispered Mrs. Bliven to me as she went away, "that I
have been a widow for more than a year. You've been a good friend to me,
Jake[16]!"

[16] There is no record of this marriage in the clerk's office; where it
was regarded, of course, as a joke. This was probably a unique case of a
secret marriage made in public; but there is no doubt as to its
validity. The editor remembers the Blivens as respected citizens. They
are dead long since, and left no descendants. Otherwise the historian
would not have told their story--which is not illustrative of anything
usual in our early history; but shows that in Iowa as in other new
countries there were those who were escaping from their past.--G.v.d.M.

I shall not close this history, without clearing up my record as to the
mares, Susie and Winnie, and the cutter, and Nick, the black-and-tan,
that saved Virg