In the church were the prince’s relations and friends, and the Princess Alicia’s relations and friends, and the seventeen princes and princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbors. The marriage was beautiful beyond expression. The duchess was bridesmaid, and beheld the ceremony from the pulpit, where she was supported by the cushion of the desk. Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding-feast afterward, in which there was everything and more to eat, and everything and more to drink. The wedding-cake was delicately ornamented with white satin ribbons, frosted silver, and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round. When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio had made a speech, and everybody had cried, hip, hip, hip, hurrah! Grandmarina announced to the king and queen that in future there would be eight quarter-days in every year, except leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, “My dears, you will have thirty-five children, and they will be good and beautiful. Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen girls. The hair of the whole of your children will curl naturally. They will never have the measles, and will have recovered from the whooping-cough before being born.” On hearing such good news everybody cried out, “Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!” again. “It only remains,” said Grandmarina in conclusion, “to make an end of the fish-bone.” THE INFANT PHENOMENON XXIII THE INFANT PHENOMENON IN our day the moving picture and the radio have made it possible for the people who live in the city and the people who live in the country to see and hear the same things. Our amusements are very much alike. But it was not so in Dickens’s day. The great actors were in the theatres of the large cities; but companies of strolling players were on the roads. They carried their stage scenery with them and did their own advertising. They did not have to compete with those who could act better.