Adelia Marries the Lawyer
No festal rejoicing, no feast was prepared,
The flocks and the herds from slaughter were spared;
Her mother and brothers refused to attend,
To see her united with Jurist, her friend.
'Twas less than one year since her father had died,
And sable crape hung on the form of the bride,
While hope, blessed hope, filled her heart and her head,
She judged of the living by him that was dead.
She though of her father, who always was kind,
And thought best of virtues in manhood combined.
No science had taught her that flesh from a horse*
Could make man inconstant in love's sacred course,
She thought he was made in God's image of dust,
And, like his Creator, was pure, kind, and just.
No vision presented a wine-glass or flask
That time in the future would ever unmask.
The pastor's own parlor was cheerful and bright,
Adelia and Jurist were wedded all right.
* Adelia does not yet believe the unscientific new-fangled notion that man was originally created from horse-flesh or dog-flesh, although the fidelity of a biped like Jurist is very diminutive when compared with that of a faithful quadruped.