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Wedding Anniversaries 597 |
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the occasion) was brought into the drawing-room (its handles tied with ribbon bows) containing the gifts, each of which was numbered. These were taken one by one by the person nearest the receptacle into the right hand, passed into the left, then handed to his neighbour. Each one tried to discover what the object was by feeling in its passage through his hands, writing his conjecture on a card with pencil attached, with which all had been provided.
The one whose guesses proved to be most correct was crowned with a circular band of tin, ornamented with a star-shaped patty-pan in front, and was presented with a wire globe-shaped basket such as is used for drying lettuce, lined with pink silk, filled with bonbons, and tied with ribbons.
The article that puzzled the contestants most was a parched-corn "popper," and when a little table-bell of silver was discovered and its giver reproached for breaking the rule imposing a gift of tin on a tenth anniversary, he defended himself by saying that they saw but the vehicle for his gift, for the gift itself was what Poe calls the "tin-tin-nabulation of the bells!"
THE CHINA WEDDING
As a variety from the other entertainments given to mark the milestones of married life, suggestions may be taken from a very pretty pageant (which is furnished by the memory of the writer) the occasion for which was the twelfth anniversary of a happy marriage—the China Wedding—which was celebrated as a Chinese reception.
The invitations were written upon rice paper, at the top of which were a few Chinese hieroglyphics ifi colour, which somewhat prepared the guests for the scene upon arrival. |
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