The Balloon Wedding
Our old group of tea-table friends is dispersed. Our sour friend, Mr. Givemfits, the bookcritic, is dead. I meant to have broken to you the news more gradually, but it slipped out. He died of aggravated dyspepsia and virulent acidity of stomach. At the post-mortem examination the surgeon found that his spleen had greatly enlarged, this spongy viscus near the fundus of the stomach having entirely vitiated the left hypochondrium. It was found also that his gall had turned wrong-side out. He kept up for a few days by the inspiration of green tea of the strongest sort; indeed, cologne and camphor did not revive him so much as the smell of the caddy. But at last he gave out, saying, “No use! My tea does me no good. Send that pile of books that I have not finished to the critic over the way. I am glad to get out of this miserable world. Good-bye. Tell Mr. Talmage to preach at my obsequies from the text, ‘All men are liars.’”
Our friend, Dr. Butterfield, the bundle of sunshine, and our Miss Stinger, the censorious, are going into connubial partnership. When, one evening after tea, I saw Miss Stinger and Dr. Butterfield looking into each other’s eyes, I said to my wife, “There is another match!” From the way the sun rises I can guess the “weather probabilities.” The dispositions of these opposites have been rapidly assimilating. Dr. Butterfield is not so placid as he was, and by recently sitting up late at nights has become quite acerb and sharp in his temper; while Miss Stinger, from dwelling so much in the comparative sunshine of the doctor, has been very much mellowed; and so the Arctic and the Antarctic will probably meet at the equator. Indeed, I will tell you a secret: these two are to be married next Wednesday night.
As we were talking last night at the tea-table about this coming event one of the visitors cried out, “Speaking of weddings reminds me of the famous balloon wedding-. Tell us all about it.” So, after the napkins had been folded and put in the rings, and the spoons had been lifted from the saucers into the cups, in signal that we were all done with the evening beverage, I told them a real story of eight years ago.
One day, when I was living in Philadelphia, a celebrated balloonist was ushered into my study. He had just arrived from New York with an invitation from one of my scientific friends who wished me to come on to Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the wicked city of New York (all Philadelphians think New York very wicked), and unite him in marriage with a most excellent lady of that city. The messenger said that after the marriage ceremony the wedding-party proposed to go up in a balloon from Central Park, the scientific friend before mentioned having made a costly piece of philosophical apparatus by which he expected to experiment on air currents as he ascended to the clouds.
The evening before the wedding I arrived at Fifth Avenue Hotel, where effort was made to induce me to perform the ceremony in the balloon and up among the clouds. But I refused, saying that while I believed in the “higher law,” I doubted the legality of a wedding performed so high up above the reach of municipal authority; besides that, my head is apt to get dizzy at a great height, and I might not be able to see straight enough to tie the knot; besides that, it is very risky for my church to have its pastor go so high up, lest, having got so finely started, he should not return, the memory of Elijah flashing across me; besides that, if I should slip and fall from a height of two or three miles, somebody standing underneath would be almost sure to get hurt. Of course I remembered the proverb that “matches are made in heaven,” but I do not believe it, for some of them are lucifer matches, and from the odor of brimstone I know they are made in the other place. Besides all these objections to performing the ceremony in the clouds, the reporters would get hold of it; and as it was a dull time among them, I knew that what was left of me after the balloon peril they would finish.
Persisting in this idea, at two o’clock p. m., in the parlor of Fifth Avenue Hotel, I united in wedlock as scientific a gentleman and as good a lady as the country holds. I wras invited to go up to Central Park and see the wedding-party start on the balloon excursion. Having several hours before the rail train started, I accepted the invitation. The newspapers had stated that I would perform the weddinor as the balloon was beinof cut loose from the earth — the only time I ever knew the newspapers to be mistaken! The great natural amphitheatre in the park had been enclosed. At one dollar a head, the largest audience I ever saw were assembled, on tip-toe of excitement. The house-tops in proximity were covered with people anxious to see the bride and groom and minister and balloon. It was four o’clock when I arrived on the ground, unaccompanied; and arousing no suspicion as to who I was, I had an opportunity of
THE BALLOON Ml: PL) IXC. 33
gazing on the most amusing and side-splitting scene I ever witnessed.
The great balloon fastened to the earth swung and struggled and flopped, as much as to say, “Time to go; bring on your wedding-party.” There were ten or fifteen reporters present. Some of them had their pieces all written; others were busy. One clever fellow, reporting for “The New York Winding Sheet,” showed me his piece with full description of bride and groom and minister, saying he had never seen the minister and wanted to know if I had, and if I thought that his description was accurate. I told him I thought it was beautiful, and that if the minister was not satisfied with that he never would be satisfied with anything. The balloon not being quite ready, the bride and groom took a long ride through the park, and it was getting toward night, and the reporters became impatient and demanded that the balloon start and the wedding begin. I quietly told one of the reporters that the wedding had been performed two hours before in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He denied it, till I told him that I was the minister. “It can’t be possible,” he said, “that you went and did that in the hotel? Why that spoils all my piece! Here is a long description of the whole thing as occurring two miles high! What shall I do with this two columns of fine description! Sir, I demand that you do something to make this report appropriate, I asked, “What would you have me do?” “Oh,” said he, “you must pronounce the benediction, or bless the people, or say a little, or do something religious: I don’t care what it is.” As I saw the excitement was spreading. I took the carriage, and by ten o’clock p. m. was at my home in Philadelphia But next morning didn’t I catch it? One ot the newspapers was headed: “Wedding in the Clouds! Disgraceful Scene! Talmage Two Miles High! Ceremony Aw ..y U: ’ followed by minute description of how the minister, standing somewhere near the man in the moon, kissed the bride, and then sat down on the edge of the balloon, and looked ten thousand feet down at the golden sunset and the ereat city beneath, with all its mighty populations of sentient people, ai other things as fine as that. Some of the religious papers were shocked — that is. they lied: and when religious papers do lie. they beat “The New York Winding- Sheet.” for they come to the work fresher. They said. “Here is a regularly ordained minister cutting up antics two miles above the clouds. We all feel humiliated. Let us pray!”
It was a great harvest for the pictorials. The news-rooms were lined with representations ol” Talmage Getting into the Ballo x. Talmage with his Coat Tail Flying over the Side of the the balloon wedding. 35
Walloon. Talmage Performing the Ceremony. Talmage Congratulating the Bride. Talmage Begging to Come Down because he Felt so Chilly. Talmage Spilled Out at Midnight on the Other Side of Hoboken, Asking which Way was Up and Down.” We do not remember just the words, but it was as lively as that. The balloon professor got all the money that was made out of the affair, but my compensation was chiefly religious. We got so many good lessons from the secular and religious newspapers about that time that we grew rapidly better, although many did not notice the favorable change. It put me on my guard about weddings, and the next time I married a couple I told them plainly that I was not responsible for their style of wedding-trip, and positively refused to go with them anywhere, whether in car, stage or balloon, and that I did not care, after I had married them, whether they went up or down.
Now, my advice to all these young people around this tea-table is not to make a balloon excursion when they get married, nor spend all their money in going to see Niagara Falls or the Mammoth Cave or the World’s Exhibition. The most sensible wedding excursion is that which is made when the oroom takes the bride from her father’s house, by the shortest route, to his own modest and unpretentious home, arranged for her coming. Four rooms will do as well as a castle. Two happy hearts are the finest furniture; and a tea-table with a young married man to ask the blessing on one side, and a young wife to hand over the smoking cup from the other side, beats Niagara Falls, Mammoth Cave and the World’s Exhibition. If heaven is anything happier than that, I know not how we will stand it.
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