During the day of the wedding, every stage coach was crowded with guests
from the North, South, East, and West, and, as the twilight deepened,
carriages began to roll in with neighbors and friends living at short
distances, until the house and grounds were full. A son of Bishop Coxe,
who married the tall and stately sister of Roscoe Conkling, performed
the ceremony. The beautiful young bride was given away by her Uncle
Gerrit. The congratulations, the feast, and all went off with fitting
decorum in the usual way. The best proof of the excellence of our viands
was that they were all speedily swept from mortal view, and every
housewife wanted a recipe for something.

As the grand dinner was to come off the next day, our thoughts now
turned in that direction. The responsibility rested heavily on the heads
of the chief actors, and they reported troubled dreams and unduly early
rising. Dear Belle Swift was up in season and her white soup stood
serenely in a tin pan, on an upper shelf, before the town clock struck
seven. If it had not taken that position so early, it might have been
incorporated with higher forms of life than that into which it
eventually fell. Another artist was also on the wing early, and in
pursuit of a tin pan in which to hide her precious compound, she
unwittingly seized this one, and the rich white soup rolled down her
raven locks like the oil on Aaron's beard, and enveloped her in a veil
of filmy whiteness. I heard the splash and the exclamation of surprise
and entered the butler's pantry just in time to see the heiress of the
Smith estate standing like a statue, tin pan in hand, soup in her curls,
her eyebrows and eyelashes,--collar, cuffs, and morning dress
saturated,--and Belle, at a little distance, looking at her and the soup
on the floor with surprise and disgust depicted on every feature. The
tableau was inexpressibly comical, and I could not help laughing
outright; whereupon Belle turned on me, and, with indignant tones, said,