Our wedding day was fixed at an early date and we were to try “the terrible test of wedlock” as Carlyle hath it. We were married already in heart and mind, but to conform to the usages of society there was an outward ceremony required. The father and mother were invited from their home in Ireland. I had not yet met them in this new phase of affairs and had some considerable curiosity about our first meeting. I had no fear of them as I had outgrown that. To be really truthful I had but little regard for them such as a man should have for his prospective parents-in-law. They had cruelly treated me as well as their daughter. Worse still, they had insulted me and deliberately. However it may tell against me, I must confess that I can never forget an insult. I can forgive it, and treat the offender with civility and all that, but I can never regard him as if he had not injured me. This lapse of propriety shows the nature and make-up of the man and I am always on my guard lest he should wound me again. My former respect and friendship has gone and I doubt if anything he might ever do would restore him again to me as he was. I know that some say they can forget as well as forgive and act as if nothing unpleasant had ever occurred, yet I doubt if they have really analyzed and understood their feelings. I have not been made of that elastic kind of material and each one must act for himself. The parents received me most cordially and made no reference to the past. Very prudent in them, as I was in a position to first throw down the gauntlet or to take up their’s at the slightest hint from them. It was not long before the wedding was referred to and I do not know just why, but I could not help suggesting that I hoped there would be no shooting or burying this time. I would have rather lost a year’s income from my villages than to have missed the blushes and confusion of the pair at this remark. “O no,” said the mother. “I have left my pistols at home, Mr. Japhet.” “And I,” said the father, “have no intention of becoming a sexton.” The daughter enjoyed this intensely, and when the laughter had subsided, remarked, “I married once wholly to please you, now I am going to marry to please myself.” No reference was ever made to this subject again. We were married and the bonds duly ratified by some sovereigns to the high priest of the occasion. For further particulars read the society papers in which it was stated that an Indian Prince had made a captive of one of Albion’s fairest daughters. I could not help forgiving and blessing the ignorance of the penny-a-liners, for if they had told the truth that I was not an Indian Prince but only the son of a —, and my wife was not of Albion, but of the Emerald Isle, the paragraph would have appeared with a different kind of aurora about it.