Chapter 18

The wedding came off about four months later, after Miss Paragon's Paris trousseau had safely arrived. Just how to describe such a wedding in reasonable space is a problem, for the plans of it were described in the newspapers weeks beforehand,—all the decorations and preparations, as well as the ancestry, possessions, and accomplishments of both bride and groom. The Associated Press sent out two descriptions of the wedding gown,—one technical, by an expert, and one imaginative, by a sympathetic artist. On the day before the wedding the Fifth Avenue church—the church where "Robbie" had taught Sunday-school, and had for thirty years listened to the edifying sermons of the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray, the church, with all its marvellous riot of flowers—was pictured with pen and pencil, and after the great event the front pages of all the New York papers were given up to telling an eager and expectant people everything about it that could be described or imagined. By that time, of course, the radical press had forgotten all its vehemence about Hungerville, and Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was again the noted financier, the prominent social light, the eminent citizen, and the inimitable raconteur.

After the couple were safely married, and had spent a long honeymoon upon the Comet, and drunk the full cup of their bliss, I remember reading in the New York papers an address which our Robbie had delivered before the Young Men's Mohammedan Association of Podunk, the theme being industrial brotherhood and the community of interest between capital and labor.