The endless ceremony, ]iarade and lavish expenditure of time and money upon bridal costumes, trousseaus and wedding tours were unknown to the simplicity of those times. If it had not been so, thecostly paraphernalia of a wedding would have driven the young lovers of that day into the despair of a hopeless celibacy ! Mutual happiness and success in life, and not idle vanity or foolish display, were then supposed to be the true and proper inducements to matrimony. Such alliances were more easily and naturally formed, too, from the fact that population was less transient than now. That is to say, families more frequently lived during their entire lives upon estates which had descended from father to sun through several generations. Weddings, too, even among families of some wealth, were very simple affairs. They took place at the residence of the bride's parents -- usually in the evening. The ceremony was invariably performed by a minister, in the presence of a few of the relatives and friends, and was followed by a season of festivity and merriment. For

the newly-married couple to set up housekeeping cost but a trifls. For twenty-five dollars a year two rooms could be procured sufficiently ample for a modest beginning. For as much more, they could be furnished with all that was needful for housekeeping in the way of furniture, etc.; the wife, as a general thing, providing beds, bedding and such carpets as she had been able to manufacture as the fruit of her own handiwork and industry ; so that the entire outlay, in cash, for the first year, over and above what was provided by the pareuts, would not, perhaps, exceed one hundred dollars, rent included. These facts refer, of course, to succes-sful marriages -- that is, to the great majority.