At the close of this stanza, Mrs. Ranger's voice broke also; and the good circuit rider, parson of many a scattered flock, who had pronounced the double ceremony, caught the tune and, in a mellow barytone that rose upon the air like an inspired benediction, added most impressively another stanza:
"An' may the God who reigns above An' sees ye a' the while, Look down upon your plighted troth An' bless ye wi' His smile." ^
"It's high time there was a little change o' sentiment in all this!" cried a bachelor uncle, whose eyes were suspiciously red notwithstanding his affected gayety. "I move that we march in a solid phalanx on the victuals!"
The primitive cabin homes of the borderers of no Western settlement were large enough to hold the crowds that were invariably bidden to a neighborhood merrymaking. The ceremonies of this occasion, including a most sumptuous feast, were held on the sloping green beneath an overtopping elm, which, rising high above its fellows, made a noted landmark for a circumference of many miles.
People who live apart from markets, in fertile regions where the very forests drop richness, subsist literally on the isX of the land. Having no sale for their surplus products, they feast upon them in the most prodigal way. Although through gormandizing they beget malaria, not to say dyspepsia and rheumatic arls, they boast of "living well '*; and the sympathy they bestow upon the city denizen who in his wanderings sometimes feasts at their hospitable boards, and praises without stint their prodigal display of viands, is often more sincere than wise.
^ The writer has not been able to trace the date or origin of these stanzas. She learned them in her childhood of a* Scotchwoman who recited them on a winter evening in her chimney corner, and who has long been dead. She herself has often recited the whole ballad at weddings within the past fifty years.
