"If ever one is to pray--if ever one is to feel grave and anxious--if ever one is to shrink from vain show and vain babble, surely it is just on the occasion of two human beings binding themselves to one another, for better and for worse till death part them."--_Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle._ An elderly unmarried lady of Scotland, after reading aloud to her two sisters, also unmarried, the births, marriages, and deaths in the ladies' corner of a newspaper, thus moralized: "Weel, weel, these are solemn events--death and marriage; but ye ken they're what we must all come to." "Eh, Miss Jeanny, but ye have been lang spared!" was the reply of the youngest sister. Those who in our thoughts were represented as being only in prospect of marriage are spared no longer. They have now come to what they had to come to--a day "so full of gladness, and so full of pain"--a day only second in importance to the day of birth; in a word, to their wedding day. "Are [they] sad or merry? Like to the time o' the year between the extremes Of hot and cold: [they are] nor sad nor merry." And yet few on such a day are as collected as the late Duke of Sutherland is said to have been. Just two hours before the time fixed for his marriage with one of the most beautiful women in England, a friend came upon him in St. James's Park, leaning carelessly over the railings at the edge of the water, throwing crumbs to the waterfowl. "What! you here to-day! I thought you were going to be married this morning?" "Yes," replied the duke, without moving an inch or stopping his crumb-throwing, "I believe I am." To men of a shyer and more nervous temperament, to be married without chloroform is a very painful operation. They find it difficult to screw their courage to the marrying place. On one occasion a bridegroom so far forgot what was due to himself and his bride as to render himself unfit to take the vows through too frequent recourse on the wedding morn to the cup that cheers--and inebriates. The minister was obliged to refuse to proceed with the marriage. A few days later, the same thing occurred with the same couple; whereupon the minister gravely remonstrated with the bride, and said they must not again present themselves with the bridegroom in such a state. "But, sir, he--_he winna come when he's sober_," was the candid rejoinder. It is possible that this bridegroom, whose courage was so very Dutch, might have been deterred by the impending fuss and publicity of a marriage ceremony, rather than by any fear of or want of affection for her who was to become his wife. Even in the best assorted marriages there is always more or less anxiety felt upon the wedding-day.