Sister Abigail declared, "she'd have Aunt Graves turned out of church, if she married a man who warn't a member." This was a great deal for Sister Abigail to say, for she had been the bosom friend of Aunt Graves: "people out of the church, and people in the church, shouldn't orter jine themselves together--it was agin Scripter, and would get everything inter a twist."
But Ike Turtle had decreed that the marriage should go on. He even went so far as to indite the first letter of the Squire's to Aunt Graves. This letter, which Ike exhibited to his friends, as one of his best literary specimens, was indeed a curiosity. I presume there is nothing else like it on the face of the globe. It opened by informing Aunt Graves that since the "loss of his woman, he had felt very grievous-like, and couldn't fix his mind onto anything--that the world didn't seem at all as it used to do--that he and his woman had liv'd in peace for thirty years, and the marriage state was nat'ral to him--that he had always lik'd Aunt Graves since the very first time he see'd her, and so did his woman too;" and many more declarations of similar import, and it was signed "J. Longbow, Justice of the Peace," and _sealed_ too, like his legal processes, that his dignity might command, even if his person did not win, the affections of this elderly damsel.
Aunt Graves surrendered--and all this within two months after the death of Mrs. Longbow. The Squire cast off his weeds, and made violent preparations for matrimony; and on a certain night--I shall never forget it--the affair came off.
There was a great gathering at the Squire's--a sort of general invitation had been extended far and near--the Swipeses and Beagles, Aunt Sonora, and all. Great preparations had been made in the way of eatables. The Squire was rigged in a new suit of "_home-made_," (made by Mrs. Longbow, too, in her life-time),--a white vest, and he wore a cotton bandana neck-handkerchief, with heavy bows, that buried his chin, and a pair of pumps and clouded blue stockings. Aunt Graves' dress cannot be described. She was a mass of fluttering ribbons, and she looked as though she would take wings and fly away.
Bigelow Van Slyck and Ike Turtle conducted the marriage ceremony--the one took the ecclesiastical, the other the civil management. When the couple were ready, Turtle sat down in front of them with the statutes under his arm, with Bigelow at his right hand.