Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — At the Altar. [ARTICLE]

At the Altar.

Marriage is always a serious business, but not infrequently it hen ludicrous accompaniments. An Englisn paper relates that a widower, no longer young, gave the clergyman who officiated at his second marriage a good deal of trouble by his stupidity. He seemed to be possessed by some spirit of contrariety. When told to give his right hand he gave his left. When the minister said, “Say this after me,” he immediately replied, “Say this, after me.” Then, when the words he was to repeat were given to him, he was stolidly silent At last he seemed to be aware that the minister was somewhat disturbed, and in the middle of the service he upset the reverend gentleman’s gravity by volunteering this apology: “You see, see, sir, it's so long since I married afore that you must excuse my forgetting these things.” At another time, a couple who had been married by the civil process—by an officer of the law, that is to say—were taken with a desiro to be married again in church, as the law allows. The minister, in the course of the ceremony, asked the usual question: “John, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife.?” “Why, sir,” said the astonished groom to the more astonished minister, “I told you we was married two years ago!”