CHAPTER VI.

"And then the lover."

"A horse—a horse-my kingdom for a horse!"

MY ELOPEMENT AND MARRIAGE.

SOME one has said that a life of any person who has been actively engaged in the business of the world for forty years, written or unwritten, must contain incidents instructive, in a greater or less degree, to such persons as may have the knowledge of them.

This saying will apply with more force to the lives of great captains on land or at sea-politicians, lawyers, physicians, pirates, house-breakers, and others, who have excelled in their peculiar vocations-legal or illegal-and whose eminence at court, or on the gallows, have entitled them to biographies, intended to show the steps upon which they ascended the platform of glory, and gained the extreme point of their notoriety.

I did not specify actors in the list; but the reader will of course consider them included in the general collection represented by the significant word, "others."

There is a propriety in leaving them from the list of any assemblage of professions and trades, the members of which have furnished their representative man to the gallows, as a finish to their lives.

It is a fact, that no actor has ever been executed for crime. This truth is an argument of some weight in favor of the professional stage-player. I cannot say but

some of them may have deserved the penalty; but I do say, that no crime has been proved against an actor to render him a subject for execution upon the scaffold.

I am about to trace the incidents immediately connected with one of the most important events of my life-my marriage.

In some respects, it was brought about not unlike a preceding family affair in which I was interested. At the time of my engaging in the preliminaries, I was ignorant of the similarity. I allude to a subject noticed in an early chapter-the marriage of my father and my mother. Love at first sight was the stimulant of both; but the arranging of their compact was not disturbed by any opposing cannonades from parental batteries—the prying manœuvres of aunts and cousins-piques of old maids, or disappointed bachelors. The particulars of the ceremony are lost to the world; the repositories of this important detail were guests, in the form of friends and relatives, whose memories are damaged by the confusion of things forgotten, things present, and things to come.

But the accidents by flood and field, attendant upon my own entree into married life, are fresh in my memory, as to-day's salutation of an esteemed friend; and, by a strange coincidence, this is the very anniversary of my wedding day.

There are many scenes of actual adventure, as well as the imagined situation of imaginary heroes and heroines, which have become fixed things by the power of the pencil in the hands of the great masters, ancient and modern.

I shall not descend to catalogue making. Betrothals,

marriages, coronations, elopements, have been selected as subjects worthy to live forever on the canvass, which has received the oil and earths, the salts of metals, mixed by the hand of genius extempore, as the mind directed the work.

If I had the skill of an artist, I would illustrate my journey to the clergyman, with the doings by the way, and my journey from his place of business, in panoramic style.

This may not be, from my failure, at an earlier day, to become instructed in the elements of the art of painting.

"Words, words, words," are my reliance. My palette must be supplied with such colors as the dictionary furnishes; my brush-an erratic moving pen-set in motion by the impulsive thoughts of the self-historian, who is to portray scenes in which he is the hero; and, in order to realize with all the force of recognition most necessary to "point the moral or adorn the tale," the reader must cultivate intimate acquaintance with imaginative speculation, as he attends the progress of my wedding jaunt.

To those who have seen me in the Green Mountain Boy, I need not give a description of the bridegroom of that bridal.

I wore no striped frock; but, with rather a juvenile face, and, in costume, somewhat in advance of my years, I bristled about, making preparations for the great business of marriage, with a determination little less than that of Napoleon when crossing the Alps on a very different mission.

To avoid suspicion, we arranged, at our last inter

view, that my intended should walk beyond the limits of the town in which she resided, when I was to overtake her.

I provided myself with a horse and wagon, formerly the property of a physician, and old enough to have been in the "French wars" for several years. He had a naggish sort of way when starting; this took my fancy. I was not then a much better judge of horses than some other things I could name.

I drove on; the horse turned up at every door-yard; in spite of all my requests for him to proceed, accompanied with the usual pull of the rein, and an encouraging cluck, and "get up."

He heeded them not, determined to have his own way; and, after a stop, longer or shorter, according to his usual custom, he would start off again, slackening his rate of speed after each new stop.

He began to collect his ideas, and, as I thought, was considering whether he had not gone in that direction as far as was desirable for him to go.

He came to a sudden stand-still in the middle of the road. It required all my skill in driving to prevent his turning round to go home-evidently his intention, when he refused to move forward. As an additional incentive to the "get up, sir," I touched him with the whip. Then there was a terrible moving of legs, with galvanic attempts at rearing, which caused the wagon nearly to upset as the animal crossed the road and recrossed it, responding with a grunt expressive of great dissatisfaction, at the hints given him in this way to

go on.

After an expression, between a neigh and a grunt, savoring of a revengeful epithet given in horse

Soon again he

vernacular, he jogged on awhile. relapsed into the exercise of his stand-still propensities. I again ventured the expressive use of the whip, which caused the more rapid movement of all four of his legs, ach one apparently intent on taking different directions.

It began to be dark, and I had not yet overtaken my bride-elect. Before me was a steep hill-a clergyman awaiting the arrival of the two, to be made one; behind me, the friends and family of, who might discover her absence, and, hearing of my departure with horse and wagon, follow us. An interruption to our proposed clandestine happiness was not among the improbabilities of the night.

While engaged in thoughts of this kind, and wondering what time we should meet, the interesting animal began to attend to his own business instead of mine; and, at the foot of a hill, came to a dead halt.

"Go on, John," said I, with a coaxing cluck and whistle. A shake of the tail, with evident preparations on his part for backing down the small portion of the hill he had ascended, was the response.

I began to lose my patience, and get a “leetle riled.”. This quality of my temper, likely, became apparent to the horse, as he received a smart lash across his back.

War was declared now, and no mistake. He acknowledged the blow, by kicking up, letting his heels fly in the front end of the wagon. This done, he backed vigorously across the road, until he had marked a circle from his frequent turning round. I told him to go on, not remembering, at the same time, that I was pulling him back.