The Wilmingtonian, And Delaware Register

Afflicting circumstance.—Between William Kelly and Helen Henderson a tender attachment had subsisted for years. Both resided in the parish of Urr, and little anticipating the calamity that followed, they, with joyous hearts fixed their wedding day for Friday week, the 10th inst. A number of friends were invited, and the ceremony was to have been performed at Meikle Dalbeattie's. On the Thursday preceding, she became indisposed, and on some one asking her to lie down a little, touchingly replied, "Yes, but it must be in a soft place, for oh! I feel as if I would never rise again." In the course of the day she became worse, and a doctor having been sent for, he declared the complaint to be of a serious nature, and indicated from the first his fears as to the issue. Next morning the wedding party began to assemble. The worthy clergyman also arrived; and then alas! the house of joy was turned into the house of mourning. The unhappy bride, whose sands of life were well nigh run, was humanely made aware of her situation; the heart-broken bridegroom was also warned that death was in the cup; and amidst the tears and sobs of all present, they were mutually interrogated, whether, under such an awful dispensation of Providence, the proposed ceremony should proceed or be delayed. A question so trying, was perhaps never put under similar circumstances; and after communing with their own hearts, the bride expressed a wish to close her eyes as an affectionate wife, the bridegroom to discharge the duty of a sorrowing widower, by laying the head of his betrothed in the grave. This resolution added not a little to the agony of the scene: the mournful party approached the couch of the dying woman; the divine favour was most pathetically invoked amidst many interruptions from hearts that seemed ready to burst from the bosoms they agitated; the bridegroom grasped the hand that was languidly extended in token of assent; the worthy clergyman pronounced a blessing, and in faltering accents made those one whom in less than twelve hours death had severed and sundered forever.—We cannot dwell on what followed. The eyes that affection had for a moment lightened, gradually waxed glazed and dim; the bridal bed became the couch of death; and she, who, but a day or two before, had been rejoicing in the prospect of conjugal felicity, was stretched a lifeless but lovely corpse, before many of the wedding party had resolution to tear themselves from a scene so distressing.

[Dumf. Cour.