The groom should stop and consider that sometimes the most annoying accidents occur to a young lady in dressing. Suppose for instance that in stooping over to button her shoe she breaks a spoke in her corset and has to send it to the blacksmith shop, do you think that the groom is justified in kicking over the altar and dragging his affianced up the aisle by the hair of the head? We would rather suggest that he would not. There are other distressing accidents which may happen at such a time to the prospective bride, but we forbear to enter into the harrowing details. No man with the finer feelings of a gentleman will ever knock his new wife down in the church and tramp on her, until he knows to a reasonable degree of certainty that he is right. It may be annoying, of course, to the groom to stand and look out of the window for half an hour while the bride is allaying the hemorrhage of a pimple on her nose with a powder puff, but then, great hemlock! if a man can't endure that and smile, how will he behave when the clothesline falls down and the baby gets a kernel of corn up its nose? These are questions which naturally occur to the candid and thinking mind and command our attention. The groom who would swear at his wife for being a few minutes late at the altar, would kill her and throw her stiffened remains over into the sheep corral if she allowed the twins to eat crackers in his bed and scatter the crumbs over his couch. Let us look these matters calmly in the face, and not allow ourselves to drift away into space. DON'T LIKE OUR STYLE. |OSCAR WILDE closes his remarks about America thus: "But it is in the decay of manners that the thoughtful and well-bred American has cause for regret. I have repeatedly said this, but I am told in reply: 'We are still a young country, and you must not be too severe upon us.' 'Yes,' I answer, 'but when your country was still younger, it's manners were better. They have never been equal since to what they were in Washington's time, a man whose manners were irreproachable. I believe a most serious problem for the American people to consider, is the cultivation of better manners among its people. It is the most noticeable, the most painful defect in American civilization." Yes, Oscar, you are, in a measure, correct. Our manners are a little decayed. So also were the eggs with which you were greeted in some of our cities. That may have given you a wrong impression as to our manners and their state of health. We just want to straighten out any little error of judgment on your part as to American customs, and to impress upon your mind the fact that the decayed article which, in most cases you considered our miasma-impregnated etiquette, was what is known among savants as decayed cabbage. MR. T. WILSON.