"Stumpy's beauty is so entirely moral that I fear it never would be popularly appreciated; besides, poor brute, he is quite capable of dying for love of me if I gave him up. That's an accomplishment few men attain to. Well, Hal, go to bed now, or you'll be too sleepy to behave respectably to-morrow. God bless you!" CHAPTER XLIV. THE WEDDING JOURNEY. A wedding journey,--what is it? A tour to all the most expensive and fashionable hotels and watering-places. The care of Saratoga trunks and bonnet-boxes. The display of a fashionable wardrobe made purposely for this object, and affording three altogether new and different toilets a day. Very well. Doubtless all this may coexist with true love; and true lovers, many and ardent, have been this round, and may again, and been and be none the worse for it. For where true love is, it is not much matter whatever else is or is not. But when the Saratoga trunks, the three dresses a day, and the display of them to Mrs. Grundy, have been the substitute for love and one of the impelling motives to marriage, or when they absorb all those means and resources on which domestic comfort and peace should be built during the first years of married life, then they are simply in Scriptural phrase "the abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not." Yet apart from that there is to me a violation of the essential sacredness of the holiest portion of mortal life in exposing it to the glare of everyday observation. It seems as if there were something so wonderful and sacred in that union by which man and woman, forsaking all others, cleave to each other, that its inception requires quiet solitude, the withdrawal from the common-place and bustling ways of ordinary life. The two, more to each other than all the world besides, are best left to the companionship of nature. Carpets of moss are better than the most elaborate of fashionable hotel furniture; birds and squirrels are more suitable companions than men and women. Our wedding was a success, so far as cheerfulness and enjoyment was concerned. The church had been garlanded and made fair and sweet by the floral tributes of many friendly hands. Jim Fellows and one or two of the other acquaintances of the family had exerted themselves to produce a very pretty effect. The wedding party was one of relatives and near friends only, without show or parade, but with a great deal of good taste. There was the usual amount of weeping among the elderly female relatives, particularly on the part of Aunt Maria, who insisted on maintaining a purely sepulchral view of our prospects on life. Ever since the failure of Mr. Van Arsdel, Aunt Maria had worn this aspect, and seemed to consider all demonstrations of lightness of heart and cheerfulness on the part of the family as unsuitable trifling with a dreadful dispensation.