A BASHFUL BRIDEGROOM.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3340, 15 December 1883, Page 3

A BASHFUL BRIDEGROOM.

Bashful brides are more commonly to be met with than bashful bridegrooms, and America is the last place in the world where one would expect to come across a suitor who was not only too timid to do his own love-making, but too nervous to face the ordeal of a wedding before the guests invited for the ceremony. Such a man there is, however. He was bold enough to fall in love with a rich farmer’s pretty daughter, but lacked courage to plead bis cause in person. He paid his court, therefore, says an American paper, by proxy, and when this shamefaced suitor was accepted, and the day for the marriage fixed, ho fairly ran away, “biding himself in an outhouse.” The bride, greatly perplexed by the absence of her future husband, caused a search to be made, which reunited in the discovery of the truant, but he resolutely refused to come forward and claim the maiden in the face of the assembled guests. The obliging friend who had acted proxy in the love-making, seeing impediments to carrying his services so far as to play the part of bridegroom, remonstrated with the young man upon his misplaced timidity. Ihe latter expressed his willingness to be married, but on the stipulation that the officiating minister should come to the outhouse and perform his duty. There being no apparent means of overcoming this in opportune fit of diffidence, the parson was appealed to, the bride persuaded, and the ceremohy took place in the locality preferred by this singular young man. When the company gathered together for the ceremony, learned how the marriage had been performed, they returned home in disgust.