Mother's Remedies, Thomas Jefferson Ritter [reading well .TXT] 📗

must be careful to render thanks for the article sent. Amusing mistakes sometimes happen; thus a lady who had sent a pair of handsome candlesticks was mystified by expressions of gratitude for a silver berry spoon she had not sent.

A cordial form of acknowledging a gift is this:

                                     12 Canton Avenue.
    My Dear Mrs. Bruce:
       The beautiful cut glass vase sent by you and Mr. Bruce has just
    arrived, and I hasten to thank you most sincerely for your kind
    thought of me. It will be a constant reminder of your goodness to Mr.
    Waters and myself, and a most lovely ornament to our new home.
                               Gratefully yours,
                                                Marion Moore.
       July tenth, nineteen hundred and nine.

The wedding gifts may or may not be displayed, according to the personal preference of the bride. They are commonly shown to intimate friends. A room is given up to their display. Cards are to be removed.

[744 MOTHERS' REMEDIES]

Wedding Decorations.—At a church wedding it is customary, and wisest, to put the matter of decorating the church and house into the hands of a florist, who can furnish the palms and others plants required for the chancel, and carry out any color scheme desired. He has the paraphernalia requisite to effective disposition of flowers. Usually large clusters of foliage and flowers, ribbon tied, are attached to the pews reserved for the relatives; often they are arranged the entire length of the aisle, The mantels in the house are banked with flowers, southern smilax is used in profusion, and flowers are arranged upon the tables at which the supper is served.

At a church wedding in the country the bride's friends must come to the rescue, and their gardens be robbed to beautify church and home. Flowers may be sought in the fields. Large jars of daisies, wild ferns, tall grasses, autumn tinted boughs, or in the blooming season, boughs of fruit trees, can be used most effectively. At one pretty home wedding the decorations were boughs of the wild crab-apple in bloom, pink and pretty, and kept so by having the stems inserted in bottles of water, suspended by wires and concealed by other foliage. A large screen sometimes forms a background for the bridal party. If covered with wire netting flowers can be very easily attached.

Walls are not festooned; "wedding bells" and canopies are out of date. The most approved setting is tall palms, ferns on standards concealed by a lower grouping, with a few potted plants in bloom to relieve the sombreness of the green. Large flowers like lilies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums and peonies are most effective. Tulips are often employed at a spring wedding. One little country girl made good use of ordinary field clover in decorating her home for her marriage.

After a wedding, the flowers are often sent to the hospitals, or to those who are known to be ill, at the request of the bride.

THE SIMPLEST OF WEDDINGS.

Now, although we have told how the church wedding and the ordinary home wedding are conducted, it does not follow that one may not have a much simpler and yet a pretty wedding, with less "pomp and circumstance" and consequent expense.

Wherever a girl has a home, she should be married from it. This is her due, as "daughter of the house."

She may make the simplest possible preparations; may be married in her best dress, not new for the occasion. She may omit all attendants, and invite less than half a dozen of her friends; she may receive them herself and at the appointed hour simply stand up and be married to a blushing young man in a business suit, and afterwards cut her own cake, and then proceed to her new home, which may be a little flat or a cottage. But she should have the ceremony performed by a clergyman in her father's house.

If she has no parents, no home, merely a room in a boarding house, she and her affianced may go to a clergyman's house and be married there. The church and the law should sanction the rite; therefore she will not permit herself to be married by a magistrate or a justice of the peace.

As for "sneaking off" and being married without the knowledge of one's parents, this is both disrespectful and unkind—a poor return for their care of her.

[MANNERS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS 745] WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES.

The fashion of celebrating a succession of wedding anniversaries has passed its high tide and is on the wane. Nevertheless, the custom is not out, by any means. The tenth, twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversaries, known as the tin, silver, and golden, are those most frequently observed.

The first anniversary of the wedding day gives occasion for a paper wedding; the second is cotton; the third leather. The fourth is omitted; the fifth is the wooden wedding; next to be observed is the tin, celebrating the close of the first decade. The next skip is to the china, when twenty years have elapsed; and the quarter century of wedded happiness is recognized in the silver wedding.

The wooden and tin weddings are occasions of great hilarity, and mean a general frolic. The former began years ago with the gift of a rolling-pin and a step-ladder. The gifts are of those practical, useful articles that replenish the kitchen, though handsome gifts are of course easily selected. Carved wooden boxes, handsome picture frames, articles of furniture, are at the service of those who choose to pay their price.

Invitations to a wooden wedding are sometimes written or printed on birch bark or thin strips of wood, or are engraved on cards which imitate wood in appearance. The refreshments have been served on wooden plates procured from the grocer. So far as possible the wooden idea is carried out.

Tin Weddings.—Gifts for the tin wedding are of course in that material, and there is a wide range of choice. The tinsmith is often called upon to manufacture fantastic articles, anything to raise a laugh. Thus one couple were adorned, the wife with a set of tin curls, the man with a tin hat. A tin purse enclosing a check for "tin" was once presented to a tin bride on the occasion of her tin wedding. The freakish fancy of one's friends is generally much in evidence at a tin wedding. As at the wooden wedding, the bride cuts a wedding cake decorated with a monogram formed of the initials of her own and her husband's name, and the year of the wedding and of its anniversary. Refreshments may be served from tin dishes, and the guests provided with tin plates.

[746 MOTHERS' REMEDIES]

The Silver Wedding.—Cards for a silver wedding are printed in silver, or in black on silvered cards—the former being in better taste. The form—which may be used for all with the variation of but one word—that designating the nature of the anniversary, is as follows:

     1885 Mr. and Mrs. Smith 1910
          request the pleasure of your company on
            Thursday, February the twenty-fourth,
                    at eight o'clock.
                     Silver Wedding.
     George Smith Anna Hall

As the couple who celebrate are generally in the prime of life, and their friends of about the same age, a silver wedding is usually a very enjoyable function. The many beautiful articles now made in silver afford a wide range of choice in the way of gifts, both valuable and in those inexpensive trifles that please everybody because so artistic. Silverware is marked with the initials of the married pair, often enclosed in a true lover's knot. Toilet articles, pomade jars, silver jewelry, spoons, silver parasol and umbrella handles, picture frames in silver, rings and bracelets, besides the manifold pieces for table use, offer a wide individual range in choice and price.

The supper at a silver wedding is quite elaborate. The bride that was cuts a wedding cake in which a silver piece is baked; the person who gets it being expected to live to celebrate his or her silver wedding. Speeches are made, often an original poem read, and not infrequently the health of the pair pledged in a glass of wine.

Golden Weddings—Occasions for the celebration of fifty years of union are much rarer than any other. Nor are they wholly joyful. The aged couple are looking from "life's west windows" at a fast declining sun. A few short years and it must set for them. The festivities are usually planned and carried out by their descendants, who so far as possible summon to the celebration the friends of "Auld lang syne," the clergyman who performed the ceremony and any of the bridal party yet alive, and the dearest friends of the present. Invitations in the conventional form are printed in gold letters; often a monogram formed of intertwined initials is placed between and a little above the years at the top of the invitation. The wedding cake has a yellow frosting, or if in white, the monogram and the years—1860-1910—are in yellow to represent gold.

Gifts in this precious metal are naturally circumscribed, but a gold coin is apropos, particularly if Fortune has been chary of her favors. In the seventh and eighth decade people have small use for bijouterie.

A golden wedding must be a sad anniversary to the participants. When they were wedded, they were looking forward, joyously; now they recall the past, its losses and trials and misfortunes. They remember the children who are dead, or far away; or the prosperity once theirs, but now fled. Few old folks would care to celebrate their golden wedding; it is usually some well-meaning grandchild who sees in it "an occasion." Often, too, the excitement, the fatigue, the unusual strain on mind and body, result in illness which sometimes proves fatal.

The Courtesies of the Occasion.—There is no formal etiquette for any of these anniversaries. Friends, as they arrive, are greeted by members of the family; then, in the case of the elderly celebrants, are conducted to them as they sit side by side, and presented. Failing eyesight and dulled ears demand this. The congratulations are offered, and good wishes for the future. If any speeches are made, they should be brief, that neither the old couple or their guests be over-fatigued. The stay should be brief.

[MANNERS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS 747]

Gifts.—Gifts for the anniversary wedding are sometimes sent the day previous, sometimes carried in person. Anything fantastic is generally presented at the gathering, to contribute to its hilarity. The silver wedding gifts are nearly always sent in advance, and are displayed on a table, the cards of the donor usually being left on them. The recipients are to tender their thanks in person or by note.

Every effort should be made to have these festivities joyous. Especially should the wife subdue her emotion if the review of the years since her bona fide wedding day have seen the loss of beloved children. She must stifle her sad recollections for the sake of her guests.

The members of the bridal party, the more honored guests at the first wedding, the clergyman who officiated, are sought as welcome guests at the anniversary. The bride that was wears something she wore on the first occasion. If the wedding dress and the bridegroom's suit have been preserved they are worn—and wonderfully quaint they often look, so great the change in fashion.

CHRISTENING CEREMONIES.

"Our birth is nothing but our death begun,
 as tapers waste the moment they take fire."
                                 —Young.

The arrival of the stork with the new baby is an event of vast family interest, especially if it is the first visit of the bird to the domicile. In America it is not customary to announce a birth in the newspapers, as is often done in England, especially among the nobility. The personal friends of the parents receive the visiting card of both, or of the mother only, to which is attached a small card bearing the baby's full name and the date of his arrival. These are enclosed in an envelope, this again in an outer one, and mailed.

It is proper for those thus notified to call at an early date to inquire as to the well-being of mother and babe. As it is not customary for the mother to receive any but a very few of her nearest relatives under at least three weeks, callers should not be expected to see her, but are to leave cards. A note of congratulation is often sent instead of