Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York IllustratedRobinson, Solon
General
Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated
Robinson, Solon
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Temperance -- Fiction
Perhaps the reader would like to know who this neatly-dressed, bright
couple are, for he has seen them several times before. It is one of Mr.
Lovetree's oddities that you see them now. You have seen them when they
would not be very fitting guests in a parlor, but they wear
wedding-garments now. This is Tom, who held the cup of cold water to
the lips of the dying Madalina, and this is his reward. The neat, lovely
girl at his side is Wild Maggie--Miss Margaret Reagan. The
fine-looking hearty man that is leading up a well-dressed woman to the
altar--another couple to be married--is one of the former customers of
Cale Jones's grocery. It is Maggie's father. His bride is Mrs. Eaton. We
have seen her and her two children in some of the early scenes of this
volume. We saw them in the street then--we see them in the parlor now.
We see them much better, much happier this time, and we see them just as
we might see all the laboring class, if we could abolish the traffic in
rum from the world. There are two other couples here to bear testimony
to that fact. It was the particular request of Reagan and Maggie that
they should be present to witness and rejoice over the power of the
pledge to save. We have seen both these couples stand up to be married
before the same minister who is now saying the solemn words of the
marriage ceremony to those before him. You may see them as they were
when you first saw them, if you will turn back to the plate facing the
"Two Penny Marriage."
Julia Antrim and Willie Reagan act as attendants upon this last couple,
and Sally Reagan and Stella May, dressed in pure white--dresses of their
own make--with wreaths of flowers in their hair, made by their own
hands--served the company with cakes and fruits and tea and coffee. Then
the carriages came to the door, and all went--not to a tavern, or
drinking saloon for a riot, to commemorate the most serious event of
life, but in all soberness due to the occasion, to consign the remains
of poor Madame De Vrai to her final resting-place on the earth.
It is a pleasant drive to Greenwood Cemetery, and it is a pleasant place
for the tombs of our friends. It is a good place to go to meditate,
among the new-made graves in the fresh-turned earth, and among the proud
monuments of those who have lain long enough beneath their marble
coverings to be forgotten. I did not forget to look, as I passed along,
at the rose bush which I saw planted by a widow at the grave of her
rum-murdered husband. It was growing fresh and vigorously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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