were short and simple; the Unitarian clergyman from Syracuse made a few remarks, the children from the orphan asylum, in which he was deeply interested, sang an appropriate hymn, and around the grave stood representatives of the Biddles, the Dixwells, the Sedgwicks, the Barclays, and Stantons, and three generations of his immediate family.  With a few appropriate words from General John Cochrane we left our beloved kinsman alone in his last resting place.  Two months later, on his birthday, his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, passed away and was laid by his side.  Theirs was a remarkably happy union of over half a century, and they were soon reunited in the life eternal.

CHAPTER V.

OUR WEDDING JOURNEY.

My engagement was a season of doubt and conflict—­doubt as to the wisdom of changing a girlhood of freedom and enjoyment for I knew not what, and conflict because the step I proposed was in opposition to the wishes of all my family.  Whereas, heretofore, friends were continually suggesting suitable matches for me and painting the marriage relation in the most dazzling colors, now that state was represented as beset with dangers and disappointments, and men, of all God’s creatures as the most depraved and unreliable.  Hard pressed, I broke my engagement, after months of anxiety and bewilderment; suddenly I decided to renew it, as Mr. Stanton was going to Europe as a delegate to the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, and we did not wish the ocean to roll between us.

Thursday, May 10, 1840, I determined to take the fateful step, without the slightest preparation for a wedding or a voyage; but Mr. Stanton, coming up the North River, was detained on “Marcy’s Overslaugh,” a bar in the river where boats were frequently stranded for hours.  This delay compelled us to be married on Friday, which is commonly supposed to be a most unlucky day.  But as we lived together, without more than the usual matrimonial friction, for nearly a half a century, had seven children, all but one of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered, clothed, and fed, enjoying sound minds in sound bodies, no one need be afraid of going through the marriage ceremony on Friday for fear of bad luck.  The Scotch clergyman who married us, being somewhat superstitious, begged us to postpone it until Saturday; but, as we were to sail early in the coming week, that was impossible.  That point settled, the next difficulty was to persuade him to leave out the word “obey” in the marriage ceremony.  As I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation, that point, too, was conceded.  A few friends were invited to be present and, in a simple white evening dress, I was married.  But the good priest avenged himself for the points he conceded, by keeping us on the rack with a long prayer and dissertation on the sacred institution for one mortal hour.  The Rev. Hugh Maire was a little