Fathers and mothers almost always very calmly argue the almighty-dollar question, and then the aristocratic surroundings, and then the physical plausibility, and then the compatibility of the disposition, and last, not least, the moral responsibilities of their children's conjugal entanglements; but it so happened that Miss Bloomfield possessed every one of the temporalities mental, moral, physical, and golden - necessary, in their esteem, to young people jogging on through life happily together. So they were perfectly delighted that Cupid, who loves a random shot, should have befriended them so unexpectedly by the certain promise of a charming daughter-in-law.

"There is a certain critical minute in every man's wooing, when his mistress may be won, which if he carelessly neglect to prosecute, he may wait long enough before he gain the like opportunity."

"She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd:
She is a woman, therefore may be won."

But the self-reliant, Quixotic young Wyndham was the last man to believe that "faint heart ever won fair lady"; so in an incredibly short time the twain were engaged to be married. And, as Miss Bloomfield's father and mother were both dead, the old Wyndhams wished the marriage to take place instanter at their own house; but this was not possible, without offending Miss Bloomfield's adopted parents in Charleston. So she returned to town, to make preparations for the wedding.

66

Nothing shall assuage

Your love but marriage: for such is

The tying of two in wedlock, as is

The tuning of two lutes in one key: for

Striking the strings of the one, straws will stir
Upon the strings of the other; and in

Two minds link'd in love one cannot be
Delighted, but the other rejoiceth.”

Young Wyndham was only nineteen, but his mind. and person were most precociously developed, and the naturalness of his manly dignity was very charming. He had his father's great twelve-oared boat, named Brandywine," gayly painted (for no steam conveyances were in vogue in Carolina then); and soon, every thing being in readiness, he sprang gayly into the boat, with the negroes, who were in the most joyous mood. (Indeed, no mother is more interested in her child's marriage, than all plantation servants are in those of their master's children.) His father and mother were too old to accompany him on such a hardy undertaking; but, with their whole-souled blessing, they repeated

"Then waft him safe, ye winds,
O'er the deep and stormy brine;
And heaven protect the treasure
That freights the Brandywine."

Arriving safely at Charleston, the bridal ceremony was performed by the celebrated Dr. Furman, amidst a hundred whole-hearted friends; and the next day he arranged to return home in the Brandywine.

The oarsmen had their shining black skins set off to the greatest advantage, by the contrast of bright red

woollen shirts, red woollen turbans, blue woollen coats, and white woollen pantaloons; and their eyes glistened with fun, at their young master's precocious experiment; so that when the bride arrived at the wharf, they advanced with great loyalty to welcome her as their new young mistress; and affectionately and proudly they lifted her into the boat, by two oarsmen crossing hands, so as to effect a sort of sedan chair. But at this particular moment of sentimental embarkation, a new obstacle presented itself in the person of the fashionable lady's maid, who for the first time got a glimpse of her mistress's stripling husband. Starting back in great wrath, she cried out: "Fur de laud sake, Miss Liza, wuffer you gone marry dis yere boy fur. I sway, I'se not a gwining one step, from this yere town, with that Buckra, de debil if I will." Nothing offends a hobbledehoy more, than to be suspected of too much youthfulness; so in a tone of gigantic command, Wyndham said, "Helmsman, put that woman in the boat,' which these merry laughing fellows all nimbly ran to do in a single instant; and lady's maid, Liddy, now reclining under the awning with her young mistress, philosophized, no doubt, on the precociousness of the Southern boys.

A large company of congenial neighbors had been invited by the old Wyndhams, to repair to their palmetto grove, on a specified day, to welcome the bridal party home; and two hundred negroes, when they saw the boat in sight, and heard the jovial songs of the oarsmen, joined in the chorus from the shore, where they all were standing, to catch the first glimpse of their young master's blooming and majestically tall wife.

Friends had been busy for days previous, in arranging for the bride a matinée to be held in magnificent romantic arbors of laurel branches, and innumerably tinted evergreens (for the goddesses, Feronia, and Flora, keep perpetual carnival in the South); and on the day of the marriage-feast, the sun shone so brilliantly, that Phæton must have borrowed the magnificent chariot of old Phoebus to drive tandem through the resplendent green arches. Feronia encircled the grove with a hedge of living flowers and evergreens; and Ceres, and Flora, formed a splendid cornucopia, whose wide-spreading mouth, poured out in lavish luxuriance, the whole family of grains, fruits, and flowers, arranged on a grand towering grass-plat. Euterpe blew her numerous wind instruments, to convince the company that all discord is harmony misunderstood. Terpsichore, crowned with laurel, held in her hand a musical instrument in this favored palmetto grove, and Bacchus presented his choicest vintage.

Fortuna spread herself on this occasion, to expand her riches, in order to command all the edibles that the human stomach could appreciate in this feast of the god Cupid; and Fama blew her trumpet to puff the whole, against the advice of the Frenchman, who said, "Never talk to me at dinner, for I can't taste my meat;" all the senses were indulged at the same time.

The tables, formed in a circle around the garden, literally were groaning with the whole family of fish, flesh, and fowl, pies, cakes, and puddings, fruits and bouquets, nuts and wines; and last, not least, primitive.

Holland Gin* (this mercurial unadulterated spirituous liquor being very much used in Carolina in the eighteenth century). It was, indeed, a feast worthy of the gods, for the innumerable bouquets had invited the gayest, most melodious wild birds to attend the rejoicing matinée and exchange their seraphic music for a sip of nectar from the lips of the blushing dewy roses. The groom and the bride, the friends and the relatives, all flitted around from bower to bower and from table to table, in this recherche garden, to partake of the turtle-soup and sheephead, shrimp pies and crab pies, and bird pies - the great saddles of venison, and wild goose, and apple sauces, and mammoth bivalves; and the cask of wine that had been housed in papa's cellar the day young Wyndham was born,† was now opened for the first time to be drank at his wedding.

* The population of South Carolina, perhaps statistics will inform us, consume quite as much ardent spirits now as it did thirty or forty years ago, but it is not so consecutively, or so gregariously and openly indulged in as formerly. The planters bought great hogsheads of whiskey for their negroes in those jolly old times, but now they substitute molasses instead. The field negroes rarely ever were known to be intoxicated, except two or three of them on holidays, when they are, for instance, allowed Christmas week to be merry and idle, and visit their friends sometimes a hundred miles off.

"The credulous hope of mutual minds is e'er,
The copious use of claret is forbid too,

So for a good old gentlemanly vice,

I think I must take up with avarice."

BYRON.

It is a common practice in South Carolina for parents to put a cask of wine in the cellar the day their several children are born, which is not opened until their bridal morn.