And now, my Dear Children, let me advise you to avoid all show. A house full of wedding presents and dear friends, and detectives to watch the costly presents, lest the dear friends steal them, is not desirable. A wedding _trousseau_ constructed regardless of expense, to outdo some other _trousseau_ and to create popular effect, is very vulgar. A lavish display of diamonds and silver, and glittering gewgaws, exhibited merely for ostentation, may make your curious friends envious, but it will make your judicious friends grieve. A clean flag-stone walk to the church will not injure your dainty feet any more than the Brussels carpet, and I would not favor your feet too much, for they may have to walk in some very flinty places yet. It is well, also, to have some regard to the proprieties of the church itself, and not transform it so much, that if St. Paul should happen to drop in, he wouldn't know whether he was in a circus or a menagerie. I always tremble for the bride who starts off in life in this manner. We cannot always float smoothly along, reclining on velvet cushions, with favoring winds swelling silken sails, and golden oars keeping time to music. It has been discreetly ordered that reverses shall overtake us all before we get into the snug haven of old age. And in that night of tempests, when the whole heavens seem shutting grimly down, and not a star of hope can peep through the wild wrack, the fate of a Canary bird in a thunder-storm is the fate of this bride. The first move is the key to all the rest. It is well, therefore, to have that move made calmly, deliberately and thoughtfully, without any reference to the opinions or the curiosities of others, with all the contingencies of life steadily in view, and with the two lives in one, braced and fortified to meet them. My say was ended, and as Boosey and Celeste thanked me and went out seriously, she with a little faster hold upon his arm, and he with a firmer look of resolution upon his face, as if he were mentally bidding good bye to his follies, I sent my blessing out with them, for I was sure that he would get the vessel into such good trim that he and the Butterfly would be uninjured in any storm. March 28, 1868. _APRIL._ Although this snivelling humbug, April, as I write, has spread out one of the bluest and softest of skies, and is coaxing the leaves to unroll their little green packages, and the grass to shoot up through the brown sod, and the birds to come up from the warm South, I can only say with the Rabbi in Uriel Acosta, "We have seen all this before."