I had spent the Sabbath at a small county-seat village, and on Monday morning my kind friend and hostess said to me: "We are to have a large wedding on Thursday night of this week, and, if possible, you must stay in the county long enough to attend it. Mr. C----'s only daughter is to be married to Mr. R----, our county clerk, and, as Mr. C---- is a widower, I leave home this morning to go and assist them in their preparations." As I was obliged to visit several persons in different parts of the county, on business connected with my Bible work, I planned my rides so as to reach the neighborhood in which Mr. C---- resided on the day appointed for the wedding. I received a cordial welcome from my lady friend, who was installed as presiding mistress for the occasion, and from the father of the bride, to whom she introduced me. He was an old and highly esteemed citizen of the county, and a warm personal and political friend of her husband. It was on account of these relations between the families, and purely as an act of neighborly kindness, that she had left her own home to take charge of his family, and direct his servants during this, to them, eventful week. He belonged to the dominant party, and had represented his fellow-citizens in the Legislature of the State. Tall in stature, plainly dressed, mostly in home-made jeans, of simple, unstudied manners, his kind face and warm heart bespoke a man to be revered and loved by his neighbors and by all to whom he was known. He was in comfortable but not affluent circumstances--in the vernacular of the region, "a good liver." His house was of the prevailing style of architecture for the better class of plantation-houses in the Southwest and South. It was a two-story frame, with a wide hall or "passage" through the middle of it, and a chimney on each end, built outside of the house. In the rear, and communicating with it, was a log building, which had probably been the home of his early married life, in which the supper-table was to be spread for this occasion. Early in the afternoon the guests began to arrive. A few from adjoining counties, and from the greatest distance, persons of wealth and high social position, came in carriages; but by far the greatest number, both of ladies and gentlemen, arrived on horseback. The ladies almost invariably had a carpet-bag or sachel hung on the horn of their saddles, in which they brought the dresses in which they were to grace the occasion. A horseback-ride over such roads, and through such mud and clay as most of them had come, would not leave the most becoming wedding attire in a very presentable condition. Hence these arrangements to "dress" after their arrival. As they rode up, many of them with calico sun-bonnets and butternut-colored riding-dresses, such as I have elsewhere described, and bespattered with mud, they looked more like bands of wandering gypsies than wedding guests. But the best of colored waiting-maids,