University of Virginia Library

10. X.
A GOLDEN WEDDING, AFTER ALL.

In the mean while, Mr. Phil Kermer walked very fast,
and in a very extraordinary direction for a man of business
at that time of night, namely, to Uncle Jim's door, when
he knew very well that Uncle Jim was n't at home. He
seemed to think it necessary that Emma should be at
once informed of the joyful news of Clint's resurrection. It
was joyful news, indeed, his coming conveyed to her,
when the door opened, and he himself appeared almost
like one raised from the dead, to eyes even then red with
weeping — not for Clint.

When Uncle Jim returned home, and found a happy
couple sitting up for him (of course, they could n't have
been sitting up for anything else at that time of night),
Mr. Phil's little matter of business seemed to have been
quite satisfactorily arranged.

One other little matter remained for Phil to attend to,
on reaching his own lodgings; which was, to destroy the
letter he had written to the president of the Ice Company,
and to write another in its place, which consisted of
two words, simply: —

“I accept.”

The next day Phil entered on his new duties as foreman,
with an energy that augured well for his own future and
for the interests of the company.

The harvest had begun; an army of men and horses
were at work, cutting fields of ice into checkers, and
breaking up these checkers into blocks to be raised by
machinery, and stored in the great ice-houses; when, toward
noon, Farmer Corbett, who had been kept away from
the pond by an attack of rheumatism, came limping along,
with a puckered and suffering countenance, to see what
was going on.

“We 've begun to cut, you see,” said Phil. “And Clint
has been found.”

“You don't say! Where?”

“I discovered him, when taking a look at the ice off
Jones's shore.”

“I telled ye so! I telled ye so!” said the prophet,
although the spot indicated was half a mile from the deep
water which his theory favored. “Exac'ly where I said.
Froze in the ice, was n't he? Ye remember what I telled
ye.”

“Not precisely frozen into the ice, — he was walking on
the ice,” said Phil.

“Not drownded?” cried the old farmer, with alarm.

“Not a bit of it; but alive and well, Mr. Corbett.”

Whereat the prophet's countenance, which had brightened
wonderfully a moment before, assumed once more its
puckered and suffering expression, and he was observed to

limp away more painfully than ever. At first, he professed
an utter disbelief in Clint's return to life, declaring
it to be “agin natur', and agin reason”; but after he had
beheld with his own eyes the miracle of the young man
moving about bodily on the pond (for Clint was “in the
ice” again, with his friend Phil), he consoled himself by
saying that “if the feller had 'a' been drownded, he 'd 'a'
been found exac'ly as he telled 'em.”

Clint got along very well with Phil, and, consequently,
with everybody else on the pond, after this. We must
here do him the justice to add, that he gets along very
well with the old folks too. A fortnight's rough experience
as hostler and man-of-all-work in a country tavern, under
a hard master, had prepared him to appreciate the privileges
and comforts of home; while the great change that
had taken place in his grandparents did much to bring
about a reform of manners in him.

Clint missed the chance of attending his own funeral,
but he had something, perhaps, quite as good in its stead.

“Did you think, Jonathan,” said old lady Dracutt, one
day, “that that was the fiftieth anniversary of our weddin'
the night 'fore Clinton went away.”

“Yes; and I 've thought on 't a good deal sence,” replied
the old man. “I 'm sorry it should have passed so.
Some people have a golden weddin' on that anniversary.
I don't think we desarve a golden weddin' exactly; but if
any old couple ever needed to set the example of bein'
married over agin, in a new sperit, it 's you and me, Jane.
Don't you think so?”

“I do! I do! I wish that anniversary was n't past;
though maybe it a'n't too late to have our golden weddin'
now. Our unnat'ral way of livin' together has been known
to everybody so long, I feel as if I 'd like to make some
public profession of our change of feelin's, — jest have our

friends come in and see us married over agin, in a better
sperit, as you say.”

Friends favored the idea, and proffered their assistance;
and so it happened that, instead of a funeral in the old
Dracutt house, there was, before many days, a golden
wedding.

The peculiar circumstances of the occasion invested it
with extraordinary interest; everybody seemed eager to
witness the second marriage of an aged couple who had
lived separated under the same roof, without speaking to
each other, for so many years. Their first marriage, fifty
years before, had been called a romantic one; but this, all
things considered, was even more romantic — it was certainly
far more significant — than that.

Old and young were present, a houseful of guests, —
those who had lived through the great experience of
wedded life, and those who were just entering upon it,
with youthful passions and rainbow-colored hopes. Nor
were absent little children, yet innocent of the sweet but
awful knowledge of love. All Emma's little flock were
there, even down to little Sissy, whose dancing, golden
curls and cherubic cheeks presented a strange contrast to
the gray hairs and wrinkles of the aged pair. Dear, laughter-loving
child! the world was all before her now, while
they were leaving it fast behind them. Little she thought
that she would ever grow old, and grizzled, and infirm, like
them. Yet that aged bride, so bent, was once a beauteous,
beaming child like her; and who knows what shadowy
cares may come on the wings of the swift years to darken
and trouble that little one's dream of life? For when
seventy birthdays more shall have passed over her, and
her golden wedding-day shall have come, and she looks
back to this day, will the long life between, with all its
joys and disappointments, seem anything else but a
dream?

All the old people who could be found, that had been
present at Jonathan and Jane's first wedding, were invited
to this; and, strange and sad to say, only four out of all
that happy company could be obtained, — three besides
Cousin Jim! What a solemn commentary was that upon
the fleeting shows of the world! If length of years and
worldly pleasure and gain were all of life, it would not
seem to amount to very much, after all, — do you really
think it would, my octogenarian friend?

It was a sad though happy occasion to the aged bride
and bridegroom; and when, after the wedding ceremony,
friends crowded around to congratulate them, they could
not refrain from tears.

“I feel,” said old man Dracutt, “that we are married
now, not for time, but for etarnity. I don't regret that life
is short, but that so much of our life has been misspent.”

“Don't say your experience of life has not been good
and useful to you,” cried cheery old Uncle Jim. “I 'm
sartin it has.”

“Yes, in one respect it surely has,” said Jane, smiling
through her tears. “The habit of not speaking to each
other, under any provocation, beats everything in the way
of discipline I ever heard of. It has given me a command
of my own temper, which maybe I could never have got
in any other way. Try it, you that need such a discipline,
— but not in the way we did. O, if people would only
learn to do for love what we did for pride and resentment,
and bridle the tongue, what a mortal Paradise married life
might be!”

“Wal, wal!” cried Uncle Jim, determined that the occasion
should pass off joyously; “I don't see but what you
have about as much to be thankful for as any of us. Clint
has come home all the wiser for his little trip up into
New Hampshire, and —”

“And we have got out of the ice, too,” said old man
Dracutt, smiling; “for it was us that was froze all the
time, without knowin' it.”

“Yes, yes; but you 're thawed out now, and all our
hearts are softer and better for your experience. Old age
a'n't such a bad thing; I want our young friends here to
learn from us to-night that it a'n't. I believe that I grow
cheerfuller than ever as I grow older; and it will always
be so, if we only learn to regard life, not as a thing to be
prized and clung to for itself alone, but only as a discipline,
as you say, Jane, — only as a discipline and a preparation
for a higher and happier futur'.”

“If I can get to look at it in that way, then I sha' n't feel
that so much of my life has been wasted,” said the bridegroom,
shaking Uncle Jim's hand. “But, O my friends!”
shaking hands with the younger guests, “may you be
saved from the necessity of such a discipline as we have
had! To avoid that, take from me one word of advice,
especially you that are about to marry: never let anything
stand in the way of perfect harmony and trust in
one another; but give up everything, give up everything
for LOVE!”

I don't know how it happened, but the old man looked
very particularly at Emma Welford and Phil Kermer as
he said this.