Twice Told Tales | Page 8

voice in the pulpit, nor music in the choir.
Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice to be a desert in the
heart of the town and populous only for a few hours of each seventh
day? Oh, but the church is a symbol of religion. May its site, which was
consecrated on the day when the first tree was felled, be kept holy for
ever, a spot of solitude and peace amid the trouble and vanity of our
week-day world! There is a moral, and a religion too, even in the silent
walls. And may the steeple still point heavenward and be decked with
the hallowed sunshine of the Sabbath morn!

THE WEDDING-KNELL.
There is a certain church, in the city of New York which I have always
regarded with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there
solemnized under very singular circumstances in my grandmother's

girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene,
and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now
standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred I
am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would it be worth while to
correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error by reading the date of its
erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church surrounded by
an enclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear urns, pillars,
obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the tributes of private
affection or more splendid memorials of historic dust. With such a
place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath its tower, one would
be willing to connect some legendary interest.
The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement,
though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part and
forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr.
Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all men
who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions a
vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always an
indolent one, because his studies had no definite object either of public
advantage or personal ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and
fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable relaxation
in his behalf of the common rules of society. In truth, there were so
many anomalies in his character, and, though shrinking with diseased
sensibility from public notice, it had been his fatality so often to
become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of conduct, that
people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of insanity. But there
was no need of this. His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked
the support of an engrossing purpose, and in feelings that preyed upon
themselves for want of other food. If he were mad, it was the
consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless and abortive life.
The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom in
everything but age as can well be conceived. Compelled to relinquish
her first engagement, she had been united to a man of twice her own
years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and by whose death she
was left in possession of a splendid fortune. A Southern gentleman
considerably younger than herself succeeded to her hand and carried
her to Charleston, where after many uncomfortable years she found
herself again a widow. It would have been singular if any uncommon

delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's; it
could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment, the
cold duty of her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart's principles
consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her Southern
husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea of his
death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was that wisest but
unloveliest variety of woman, a philosopher, bearing troubles of the
heart with equanimity, dispensing with all that should have been her
happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in most matters,
the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one frailty that made
her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not remain beautiful by proxy
in the person of a daughter; she therefore refused to grow old and ugly
on any consideration; she struggled with Time, and held fast her roses
in spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared to have relinquished
the spoil as not worth the trouble of acquiring it.
The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such an
unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs.
Dabney's return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper
ones, seemed to concur