Is not that one of the themes the plaintive melody of which runs through most middle-aged and older lives: "Alas! how dead are times now?" This is my comment, not the brave Gardner's. CHAPTER XXV I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS AND HAVE THE BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR CONTRASTING THE GRAVE AND GAY Life has just been varied by two weddings--two: one serious and the other most distinctly the reverse. I attended both. The first wedding was that of Alf Pinto and Bonnie Birdie Twist; the second--but let us take them in order. Bonnie Birdie Twist, as her name may suggest, is in the profession too, a sprightly lady vocalist with a high kick and a wink of such calibre that it can carry with deadly effect to the uttermost standing-room. She has not long entered her kingdom, but is firmly established there now, hardly less profitably than Alf himself. Her particular line of song is the confidential, involving responses from an audience only too ready to oblige, her latest success being entitled, "Is there room in your lap for me?"--a question that produces in every Hall where she sings an Everlasting Yea that lifts the roof. Such a lady would hardly have an ordinary wedding; and the ceremony to which I was invited by Mrs. Duckie, and from which I felt I could not abstain without hurting that good woman's feelings, was as far removed from the ordinary as a naphtha lamp is removed from an altar candle. The wedding was I can hardly say solemnised but achieved under difficulty by a patient and tenacious Islington Registrar in the Maltravers Assembly Rooms, which had been taken for the occasion by Birdie's father. That gentleman, who is now a thriving publican and a very assiduous racing man, was once a heavy-weight champion boxer, while Mrs. Twist, whose plush gown sent the thermometer up five degrees, had her triumphs years ago as Polly Pearl the Coster Queen. The Assembly Rooms were crowded with warm-hearted professionals in every kind of clothes but the expected, and jovial bookmakers and licensed victuallers--all accompanied by their ladies, and all very gay from the moment they arrived, and gayer still as the day advanced, and the ceremony became more vivacious, and the ex-bruiser's generous flow of wine got to work, and appropriate excerpts from Alf and Birdie's repertoires rose in chorus: so appropriate indeed, that it seemed as if they had been singing all their lives only by way of preparation for this exuberant festival. Birdie's bridesmaids were her own sisters, both of whom are budding soubrettes, and four other friends with yellow hair. Be-trice had been implored by Alf to serve too, but she declined, partly on an impulse of natural prudence and partly because the legitimate drama, to which she is affiliated, must not be too friendly with the variety stage.