Such, in the main, was the wedding of David Crockett with the Irishman’s daughter.  In the morning the company dispersed.  David also and his young bride left, during the day, for his father’s cabin.  As the families of the nuptial party both belonged to the aristocracy of the region, quite a splendid marriage reception was held at John Crockett’s.  There were feasting and dancing; and “Black Betty received many a cordial kiss.  The bridegroom’s heart was full of exultant joy.  David writes: 

“Having gotten my wife, I thought I was completely made up, and needed nothing more in the whole world.”

He soon found his mistake, and awoke to the consciousness that he needed everything, and had nothing.  He had no furniture, no cabin, no land, no money.  And he had a wife to support.  His only property consisted of a cheap horse.  He did not even own a rifle, an article at that time so indispensable to the backwoodsman.

After spending a few days at David’s father’s, the bridegroom and bride returned to the cabin of her father, the Irishman.  Here they found that a wonderful change had taken place in the mother’s feelings and conduct.  She had concluded to submit good-naturedly to the inevitable.  Her “conversational powers” were wonderful.  With the most marvellous volubility of honeyed words she greeted them.  She even consented to have two cows given them, each with a calf.  This was the dowry of the bride—­her only dowry.  David, who had not expected anything, felt exceedingly rich with this herd.

Near by there was a vacated log cabin with a few acres of land attached to it.  Our boy bridegroom and bride hired the cabin at a very small rent.  But then they had nothing whatever to put into it.  They had not a bed, or a table or a chair; no cooking utensils; not even a knife or a fork.  He had no farming tools; not a spade or a hoe.  The whole capital with which they commenced life consisted of the clothes they had on, a farm-horse, two cows, and two calves.

In this emergence the good old Quaker, for whom David had worked, came forward, and loaned him fifteen dollars.  In that wilderness, food, that is game and corn, was cheap.  But as nearly everything else had to be brought from beyond the mountains, all tools and furniture commanded high prices.  With the fifteen dollars, David and his little wife repaired to a country store a few miles distant, to furnish their house and farm.  Under these circumstances, the china-closet of the bride must have been a curiosity.  David says, “With this fifteen dollars we fixed up pretty grand, as we thought.”

After a while, in some unexplained way, they succeeded in getting a spinning-wheel.  The little wife, says David, “knowed exactly how to use it.  She was also a good weaver.  Being very industrious, she had, in little or no time, a fine web of cloth ready to make up.  She was good at that too, and at almost anything else a woman could do.”