Very naturally, weddings often came of these merry-makings, and were celebrated with as little ostentation and as much hearty good fellowship. The welcome guests brought no costly and useless presents for display; there were no gifts but the bride's outfit of home-made beds, homespun and hand-woven sheets, table-cloths, and towels given by parents and nearest relations. The young couple did not parade the awkwardness of their newly assumed relations in a wedding journey, but began the honeymoon in their new home, and spent it much as their lives were to be spent, taking up at once the burden that was not likely to grow lighter with the happiness that might increase. But if the burden became heavy, and the light of love faded, there was seldom separation or divorce. If there were more sons and daughters than could be employed at home, they hired out in families not so favored without loss of caste or sense of degradation in such honest service. They often married into the family of the employer, and their position was little changed by the new relation. For many years the wheat crop in Vermont continued certain and abundant, and formed a part of almost every farmer's income, as well as the principal part of his breadstuff, for the pioneer's Johnny-cake had fallen into disrepute among his thrifty descendants, who held it more honorable to eat poor wheat-bread than good Johnny-cake, and despised the poor wretch who ate buckwheat. It is quite possible that the first demarcation between the aristocrats and the plebeians of Vermont was drawn along this food line. Wool-growing was fostered in the infancy of the State by public acts, and almost every farmer was more or less a shepherd. A marked improvement in the fineness and weight of the fleeces began with the introduction of the Spanish merinos in 1809.[98] By the judicious breeding by a few intelligent Vermont farmers, the Spanish sheep were brought to a degree of perfection which they had never attained in their European home, and Vermont merinos gained a world-wide reputation that still endures; while the wool product of the State, once so famous for it that Sheffield cutlers stamped their best shears "The True Vermonter," has become almost insignificant, compared with that of states and countries whose flocks yearly renew their impoverished blood with fresh draughts from Vermont stock. Shearing-time was the great festival of the year. The shearers, many of whom were often the flock-owner's well-to-do neighbors, were treated more as guests than as laborers, and the best the house afforded was set before them. The great barn's empty bays and scaffolds resounded with the busy click of incessant shears, the jokes, songs, and laughter of the merry shearers, the bleating of the ewes and lambs, and the twitter of disturbed swallows, while the sunlight, shot through crack and knot-hole, swung slowly around the dusty interior in sheets and bars of gold that dialed the hours from morning till evening.