Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1891 — Relations by Marriage. [ARTICLE]

Relations by Marriage.

BY AMY RANDOLPH.

Everybody went to Pamela Pepper’s wedding; It was quite natural that they should. Miss Pepper w’as as well known in Cornstalk Corners as the old town clock itself on the steeple of the Methodist meeting-house. She had made dresses and trimmed bonnets there for more years than she cared to remember. She was gossip-in-general, prime mover in all the tea-parties, quilting-bees and apple-butter frolics, head of the charitable and religious societies and chief chronicler of all the dates in regard to births, deaths and marriages. She knew what everybody said to everybody else, whut Mrs. Meluth gave for her new sealskin cloak and in how many weeks Mr. Luckless’s farm would be foreclosed on. She was quite au. fait as to every household quarrtfl, all the family skeletonsand a score of motives for each action, which no one else would have dreamed of. No story was quite complete unless Miss Pamela Pepper’s version of it had been heard. And if people didn’t know their own speeches after they had been through the mediumship of Miss Pamela’s interpretation, surely that was ho fault of hers.

But the blossoming-time comes, wo are told, even to aloes a hundred years old—and Miss Pamela Pepper was married just before she floated into the forties. How it had come to pass, nobody knew exactly. There were some who had the hardihood to assert that Mr. Josiah Black "bad come to the dressmaking establishment to see Mary More, the blue-eyed little apprentice who made the button holes and sewed the straight seams, but that being skillfully intercepted by Miss Pamela, she had taken his overtures as intended for herself and accepted him effusively, before he had proposed; and that Josiah, being a meek young man with white eyelashes and a flat, freckled face, had not the requisite courage to escape from the meshes where'with she had so artfully trapped him. Be that as it might, it was certain that Mary More had been discharged and that Miss Pepper was now Mrs. Josiah Black. There had been an outfit ordered, economically, from New York, a weddingcake nearly as big as a cart-wheel, and a deal of ostentation. The bride declared that it was a case of love at first sight. “It ain't a month,’’ she remarked,gushingly, “since me and Josiah first set eyes on each other, when he came into the store to ask the way to Squire Robinson's. He looked at me—oh, how he looked at me! And I felt a sort of ail overishness that I couldn’t describe noway in the world! He didn't think of money nor yet of lineage, nor none o’ them things; he only felt as we was made for each other by Providence!’’ In which case, Squire Robinson remarked, sub rosa, Providence had made a bad mistake, of it for once. For Mrs. Josiah Black was tall and shallow, with the frame of a Prussian grenadier, while Mr. Josiah Black was slight and roundshouldered, with flaxen locks and watery, blue eyes. Mrs. Squire Robinson said there was fifteen years' difference in their ago. But the bride said it was only five. And who should know if the bride didn’t? But when the couple were seated in the train, speeding toward Blue Point, where the ancestral halls of the Black family were situated, Pamela grew confidential. “We’re ugoin’ right to your, house, Josiah, I suppose?” said she. “Yes,” said Josiah, with a deep sigh. “Where else should we go?” “Some folks board,” suggested the bride. “Just at first, at least.” “I hain’t no money for that sort of fane’work,” dolefully remarked the gro m “is it pleasant there, dear?” asked the bride. “Well, it ain't bad,” responded Josiah, in-a non-committal way. “You never told me about your family, Josiah,” went on Mrs. Black, soothingly. “Fam’ly?” repeated Josiah, with a

startled look. “I hain’t got no fatn’ly. I ain’t never been a married man before.” “I.mean your relations, Josiah.” “’/here's my step-mother,” said Josiah. “And there's my two sisters and my brother and Uncle ’Lijah and Aunt Nancy —and Heber and Stratton and—•” “Oh, stop, stop!” ejaculated the bride. ‘They don’t all live with you?” “No,” Josiah answered. “Not all.” “Dear mo, Josiah,” said Mrs. Black, “how dead und alive you seem. Nobody would realize that you had beeu only three hours married.” “I don't seem to realize it myself,” said Mr. Black, leaning his head against the car window, with a thoroughly discouraged air. “But if you s’pose I’m going to turn my house into a refuge for all your relations,” added Mrs. Josiah, with energy, “you are very—dear me! Blue Point, a’ready? This can’t bo the place, can it? Why, we hain’t—” Just then the relentless conductor, swooping through the train, bore Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Black off to the platform, the latter still remonstrating loudly. Mr. Black was silent and moody as they walked up the steep hill lending to the village street. Mrs. Black was secretly resolving that, husband or no husband, she would not be captured by thro Goth and Visigoth horde of relations who doubtless were waiting to pounce on her hearth.

“I must assert myself,” she thought, “at the very first, or I shall beoverrun!” “Here is the house,” somberly remarked Josiah. A long, low, red building faced them at the top of a hill, with a fence draped with morning-glory vines, trailing hops and wild vetches, and two or three gnarled quince trees leaning up against the south end. “ There’s lights inside,” said the lato Miss Pamela. “And a fire! There’s somebody there! ” “My folks,” briefly remarked Josiah. “ Your folks ! ” repeated Pamela; and there was a world of unsyllabled meaning in her voice. Walking valiantly forward, she flung open the door, and stood facing the little group which was gathered amicably around the blazing fire. And Josiah Black, following, pushed her, in rather an undignified manner, into their midst, with the introductory speech; “My w’ife. Here she is !” “How d’ ye do, Mrs. Josiah?” said an elderly woman. “ I’m your husband’s step-ma.” “ And I’m his sister,” said a blonde matron with lilac ribbons in her cap. “ And I’m his other sister,” spoke up a short, sharp, little female with a black-and-tan-terrier sort of face and a rustling black silk dress. “Brother Simeon,” announced Josiah, as a stout man with a profusely pomatumed head rose and ducked it toward her. “And Uncle ’Lijah and Aunt Nancy,” motioning toward a solid-look-ing couple in the background; “and my cousins, Heber and Stratton,” as two tali, awkward young men emerged from behind a calico-covered screen in the rear. “I hope you all|find yourselves pretty well?” said Mrs. Josiah Black, with the geniality of an arctic iceberg. “But I shan’t find it convenient to entertain you here.” The herd of relations stared, aud Mr. Josiah’s step-ma bridled, and said; “We wasn't a-calculating to stay to tea.” “Tea or dinner, it makes no difference,” said the bride. “If we’re to get along comfortable together, all those things has got to be understood at once. I ain’t goin’ to keep free hotel for my husband’s relations, und I don’t want it to be expected of me.” There was an indignant buzz among the relations at this remarkable piece of plain speaking—they all rose up in concert. “Well,” said they, addressing Josiah’s “step-ma,” as if she were the representative of the mass, “if Josiah’s wife don’t want nothin’ to do with us, we certainly don’t mean to trouble her.’’

“Don't be in a hurry,” faintly uttered Josiah; but none of the relations took the least notice of him, as they seized upon their hats, bonnets, shawls and other articles of outer wrapping with precipitate haste. “Of course,” added Mrs. Josiah, a little alarmed at the result of her own generalship. “I shall always be happy to have you call in a friendly way.” Josiah’s step-ma, who had taken a package from the table, stonily remarked as she held it up: “My ice-pitcher—best triple plate and porcelain-lined—as I had intended for a wedding present. But if folks don't want me, they don't want my presents, so I’ll wish you good-bye, Mrs. Black.” One of the sisters took up a cream-jug of chased silver-—the other put a plated caster buck into its box, and off they marched. “Our simple offerings,” said they, “are hardly elegant enough for one so excloosive in her tastes us our brother's wife.” Simeon Black swung a heavy wickerbasket across his shoulders. “A tea-set of real Ingy china that belonged to a Chinese sea-captain,” said he, “and I got ut a bargain—but I guess it ain’t wanted,” and he, too, departed, banging the door. One by one the others took a hasty leave, each carrying some little offering of more or less value which had been brought thither for the delectation of “Josiah’s wife.” while that lady herself stood gazing after them in blank dismay, with an agonized consciousness that she had committed an awful political blunder in this, the first term of her married life. “There!” said Josiah, grimly, “now you’ve done it, Pamela. Every one of 'em well-to-do and livin’ in their own places. And, as sure as you live,.they’ll never forgive you in this mortal world!” “I —I thought they was coinin’ here to live!” gasped the bride. “I only wanted to protect myself.” “Well, you've done it now,” said Mr. Black. “There is such a thing as bein’ too beforehandod.” And he sat slowly down, too spiritless even to upbraid his wife. While Pamela felt that her wedding day hud not been altogether a success. For the Blacks .were a clannish tribe, and it was even as the bridegroom had predicted. They never forgave Josiah’s wife for that first reception. —[The Ledger.