Sabbath morn!




THE WEDDING-KNELL.


There is a certain church, in the city of New York which I have always
regarded with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there
solemnized under very singular circumstances in my grandmother's
girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene,
and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now
standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred I
am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would it be worth while to
correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error by reading the date of
its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church
surrounded by an enclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear
urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the
tributes of private affection or more splendid memorials of historic
dust. With such a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath
its tower, one would be willing to connect some legendary interest.

The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement,
though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part and
forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr.
Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all
men who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions
a vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always
an indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of