absenting themselves, or returning into their winter quarters, and, threw down pieces of meat, and diamonds stuck to these: then the birds came from the sky, and took pieces of that meat, and brought them up out of the valley: whereupon El-iskender ordered his companions to follow the birds, and to pick what they could of the meat.”
I fear I ramble and am discursive, but anon shall be able to show that I can make use of the solid facts which are promised me by friends about “The Diamonds of the Exhibition.” And presently I shall from my gossip-wallet deliver stories about the hand-guns, rifles, and sporting small-arms, in which Mr. Whitworth, Messrs. Houllier, Blanchard, Durisme, L. Bernard, Custine Renette, Le Page Moutier, and the well-known Liege firms have all distinguished themselves. And you shall know the true and complete detail of the “wroughting” of the superb wedding present by the City of Berlin to the Crown Prince of Prussia, and our own dear Princess Royal, and “why” Vollgold and Sohn had the order for such a trophy of art. Then again, for a topic, there’s the gorgeous memorial or testimonial, commemorative of a very varied and honourable career, the grand silver and gold gift-piece to De Brouckere. You can see it just by the western dome, before you ascend the dais or platform on the northern side. And, by the-bye, I shall have to record the richness of Mr. Wertheimer’s exquisite furniture, at which all Belgravia raves with admiration, though presently I shall take pains to interest my readers and myself with details of its cost and the finish of the whole of the work. Oh! and again by the-bye, there is the tale of that glorious monster of a tiger, “shot in the Deyrah Dhoon in March, 1860, by Colonel Charles Reid, C.B., of H.M. 2nd Goorkahs (Sirmoor Rifles),” measuring, I should think, eight feet and a half from his nose to the end spine! How oddly one digresses. I feel I am getting from the “Diamonds,” but I promise faithfully to treat of them in the next number.
And if my gentle readers will but accept this discursive small introduction as a reverence or preliminary bow—preface, the authors call it—I am sure that more suitably in the next amount of space kindly permitted me by the Editor of Once a Week, I shall be able to tell them very interesting and peculiar points of attraction about the “mountain of light,” and the lesser brilliancies, round which a throng of crinoline holds its court daily.
HOW I CAME TO BE SOMEBODY’S BRIDESMAID.
It had from early childhood, been my great ambition to be somebody’s bridesmaid—not some particular body’s, but some indefinite body’s—anybody’s in short. The desire was so strong within me that I exacted promises from a whole bevy of my school companions (I never had a sister), to elect me to the delightful office, so soon as the time should come for any of them to appear in the character of bride. As for being a bride myself, truly I rarely, if ever, thought of that; a bridesmaid’s seemed in my imagination so much the more interesting, the more felicitous destiny. A bride, so I argued, had to leave the home and friends of her childhood; some tear, some faint sigh of regret must mingle with her strange, new, untried happiness; whereas a bridesmaid, she had no call for anything but smiles unclouded, and pleasure unalloyed. Accordingly Julia Davis, Mary Hunter, Fanny Powell, and Barbara Hemming, all promised, if they were married before me (as I was certain they would be—were they not, every one of them, a thousand times prettier, and nicer, and more pleasing than I?)—each of them promised to make me her bridesmaid. I thought myself sure of the expected bliss; but, alas! in all these four cases the cup has slipped from my lip.
Pretty, blooming Julia Davis took the smallpox directly after she left school, and was so disfigured by it that nobody knew her again, and everybody seems to consider her chances of marriage gone for ever. How I should like to remind those foolish men that beauty is but skin deep, and that Julia has an infinite number of imperishable virtues, which would ensure her husband happiness tenfold more than any of them deserve.
Mary Hunter, the second friend I named, lost her only surviving parent, also about the epoch of her leaving school, and had to go out to join her brother in India, where she married within a twelvemonth. India was, however, I considered, too far off for me to claim the fulfilment of her promise.
Fanny Powell, dear, silly, sentimental little creature, had a disappointment at seventeen: and—it is four years ago—has continued ever since to protest she shall never marry. It was only the other day she told me, with a world of emphasis, nobody must ever look to be her bridesmaid now.
And Barbara Hemming, my last, best card,—for though perhaps not the most beautiful, I always thought her the most charming of all my friends,—she was, as I was sure she would be, very early engaged. I am still her chosen friend, and should be her first bridesmaid, only—only the lovers are both so poor that matrimony is at present out of the question. I, for my part, could have waited patiently for this forlorn hope of bridesmaidship, but that I have to combat somebody else’s impatience, for—it can no longer be kept a secret—before I had ever thought of such a thing, I was myself engaged to be married. I don’t know how it came to pass, but Henry is really a very nice fellow, and I could not well refuse him only because I had never yet been a bridesmaid. Almost my first confidence reposed in him was, however, this secret wish of mine, and I could not help feeling hurt that he treated it so lightly.
“Have you any sisters, dear?” I asked one day.
“Three, dearest,” was his reply.
“Oh! then,” I continued, “one of them must be going to be married, and I know, darling, that you will persuade her to ask me to be one of her bridesmaids.”
It was such a cruel disappointment when he told me all his sisters were married. I said he ought to have opposed such early marriages.
“Why, they were all older than you at the time,” returned he, laughing.
