Bashful Bridegrooms.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 978, 28 November 1890, Page 5

Bashful Bridegrooms.

Ministers declare that in nine cases cut of ten brides are muoh more self-possessed than •re bridegrooms when the marriage ceremony ia being performed. A ehy modest looking little creature robed in white will stand perfectly ereot, looking tbe minister calmly and squarely in the eye, without for an instant losing her self.poise, while the big, blunt six-footer of a bridegroom by ber side is pale, nervous and trembling. His fingers are likely to twitoh nervously, and be may even hitob at his trouser legs or twist a corner of his coatskirt. I was once * best man ’ to a stalwart, middle-aged bridegroom, noted for his ooarage and feats of daring, and when the time came for us to go down stairs to meet the bride and her attendants he nearly had • fit, and looked like a walking corpse all through the ceremony. I had to keep saying 'Bracenp, old boy.'and * Come, come, you’ve got to go down,’ to get him started at all, and at the door he was idiotio enough to clutch at me and say :

‘Say, Fred, how would it do to have Mary and the preacher slip In here and have it all over with before we go down at all ? I can’t go through with it before all that crowd.’

‘ldiot!’ 1 said, briefly and pointedly enough to leave no doubt aB to my meaniug. •Mary won’t come in here and yon will go flown this instant!’

He got through it at last without doing or saying anything ridiculous, in which respect he wsb luckier than another stalwart bridegroom of my acquaintance, who was so dazed and overcome that he held out one of bis own Angers for the ring when the minister said :' with this ring I thee wed.’ Another bridegroom I knew lost bis head to suoh an extent that when it came time for him to say ‘I, Horace, take thee; Annie, to be ray lawful wedded wife,’ he said in an unnaturally loed tone : I, Mary, take thee, Horace, to be my lawful wedded wife;’ and when the time came for him to introduce his bride to some of his friends who had not yet seen her, he did it by saying awkwardly : * Oh, er—Miss Carter, this is my wife, Miss Barton,’ calling her by her maiden name.

Few men say *my wife * easily and naturally the first time they use the words in public.

A funny case was that of the badly startled bridegroom whostared blankly at tbe minister until asked if he took ‘ this weman to he his lawful, wedded wife,’ when he started suddenly and hastily and in the blandest manner :

'Ah, beg pardon—were you speaking to me!’

A village preacher says that he once married a rural couple at the house of the bride’s parents in the presence of a large company of invited guests. The bridegroom was a big, bony, red-faced, yonng fellow, who looked as though he could have felled an ox with his fist ; but he shivered and turned pale at the beginning of the ceremony, and at its close he fell down in a dead faint, to the manifest annoyance of his bride, who had been ' as cool as cucumber ’ throughout the whole ceremony.