Punch (24.1853)

OUR HONEYMOON.

AN APOLOGY AND AN EXPLANATION.

A GAIN I have read them; and again I feel almost convinced—indeed,
I may say, pretty well satisfied that Charlotte—I mean the dear
girl's spirit—for somehow these papers make her a girl again—yes,
show her to me thirty years ago, and that very day she was twenty—
and these papers pressed and traced with her young bride's hand place
her just as she was before me; young, and beautiful and happy—as

everybody somehow is at such a time—on her wedding-day-

And he is gone, too — both gone—both at rest together and for
ever.

Had it not been so, I would certainly not have given to the world
dear Charlotte's Honeymoon. No : had he survived, they should nave
been buried with me. Here it is. Precious leaves! Just one-and-
thirty! So delicately writ, and so neat—and so like the dear girl her-
self. <5htr $?0rmnrt00n, marked in blue sdk with gold thread—and
the silk is still as blue as were the bride's eyes—and the gold as bright
as the ring only an hour upon her finger.

Well, it was a day ! Such crying and such laughing ! And how all
the little girls threw flowers ; and how the bells seemed to rain showers
of sflver sound about us ! And how happy and merry we were ! And
how dear, good Mr. Wtnesop—he had christened Charlotte, and,
indeed, all the family, that is the children—how Mr. Wenesop in his
merry, kind way, scolded Charlotte's mother into good spirits again
when she would take on, when the post-chaise drove from the door, and
she said—dear soul!—that she somehow felt as if Lotty had gone
away for ever. Yes, how that dear, good, droll Mr. Winesop, with
his grave face, told Lotty's mother to sit upon the hearth—in that
beautiful gown I remember—all as she was, and—without a thought of
her cap—to sprinkle ashes upon it! Well, to be sure we did laugh, and
so did Lotty's mother.

Ah me! And how Mr. Winesop told me it woidd be my turn next,
when a certain person came from sea with gold dust, and elephants'
teeth, and unicorns' horns, and apes, and peacocks—and—and my
turn has never come—never could come—for the sea--

And so the old maid reads and reads again dear Charlotte's—lively,
loving Lotty—dear Lotty's Honeymoon. Yes, there are just thirty-
one sheets of paper—a honey month of one-and-thirty days. Wrapped
in blue silk—and marked, as I may say all her happy life was marked,
b letters of gold.

Dried flowers ! What a story began in them—what memories sur-
vived in them ! A flower almost in every leaf. And all—almost all—
wild-flowers. Plucked in honeymoon walks. Pretty to mark such days
with such flowers—dead and withered all, but with the sweetness ot
memory in them.

And now—will it be right to print them ? Well, when I think into
what hands they may^ fall—where they may go—I begin to determine
with myself that I will not print them.

"My dear Mary," here is her letter; I have read it twenty times to
assure myself that I am not doing wrong—"My dear Mary,—you will
find a certain little packet of papers. Two words will tell you what
they are. They may sometimes bring to your memory your old and
eariy friend; my schoolfellow and my bridesmaid. They are—many of
them, I am sure—very silly; but for that reason they are very true.

" You see, dear Mary, tMs is how it happened. The day before I
left home—that is the day before the wedding—my dear father, you
remember his methodical manner, always going, I may say about his
business and doing everything with the regularity of a watch—well,
my poor dear father, giving me a long farewell lecture, above all things
advised me to keep a diary. ' A diary,_ Lotty,' he said, holding my
hand between his_ and looking at me iulis own way over his spectacles ;
'a diary, Lotty, is a check and a monitor; and besides, may be of any
value in business. How could I have ever proved my case in that
cause—that great cause of myself versus Chtandry, but for my diary ?
Certain events had to be proved; almost impossible to prove without the
leading clue of a Journal. How, for instance, could I have known so far
back that, on the very night of the ninth of September at ten o'clock,
being then about to put my coat«on at the Plower Pot, because I had
promised your mother that on that night I would be home at'—and here
I stopped him, knowing all about it—for just then Pred rode up to the
door—and I promised briefly, but very resolutely promised my father
that from the day I left his roof—and it was to be the next day, you
know—I would keep a diary.

"And I began it. Yes, on the first of May, in the year—but you
remember the year, Mary—on the first of May, or, rather, on the
second, for the first was my wedding-day—I began my diary. And so
every day had its page for one-and-thirty days. Well, somehow, I
couldn't get any further. And when I came to read over my_ diary, as
I thought it, it didn't seem to me a diary at all: but an odd jumble of
thoughts, and feelings, and whims, and—and—and I know not what.
So—what- put it in my head I can't tell—but L resolved (despite of my
wish to do otherwise as I had promised poor father) I resolved not to

Vol. 24.

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