oken in upon by vulgar revelry; but while we may sympathise with his
view, and admit to the full the sacredness, not to say the solemnity,
of the marriage ceremony, yet it is to be hoped that it still retains a
naturally mirthful side, of which such public merriment is but the
crude expression.

With all its sweet and mystical significance, surely the prevailing
feeling in the hearts of bride and bridegroom is, or should be, that of
happiness,--happiness bubbling and dancing, all sunny ripples from
heart to heart.

Surely they can spare a little of it, just one day's sight of it, to a
less happy world,--a world long since married and done for, and with
little happiness in it save the spectacle of other people's happiness.
It is good for us to see happy people, good for the symbols of
happiness to be carried high amidst us on occasion; for if they serve
no other purpose, they inspire in us the hope that we too may some day
be happy, or remind our discontented hearts that we have been.

If it were only for the sake of those quaint old women for whom life
would be entirely robbed of interest were it not for other people's
weddings and funerals, one feels the public ceremony of marriage a sort
of public duty, the happiness tax, so to say, due to the somewhat
impoverished revenues of public happiness. Other forms of happiness
are taxed; why not marriage?

In a village, particularly, two people who robbed the community of its
perquisites in this respect would be looked upon as "enemies of the
people," and their joint life would begin under a social ban which it
would cost much subsequent hospitality to remove. The dramatic
instinct to which the life of towns is necessarily unfavourable, is
kept alive in the country by the smallness of the stage and the fewness
of the actors. A village is an organism, conscious of its several
parts, as a town is not.

In a village everybody is a public man. The great events of his life
are of public as well as private significance, appropriately,
therefore, invested with public ceremonial. Thus used to living in the
public eye, the actors carry off their parts at weddings and other
dramatic ceremonials, with more spirit than is easy to a townsman, who
is naturally made self-conscious by being suddenly called upon to fill
for a day a public position for which he has had no training. That no
doubt is the real reason for the growth of quiet marriages; and the
desire for them, I suspec