Even for the wedding breakfast, which occurred directly after the
ceremony, I had shown myself a dictator in the matter of guests.
Covers were laid in my room for seventy and among these were included
not only the members of the North Side set and the entire Bohemian
set, but many worthy persons not hitherto socially existent yet who
had been friends or well-wishers of the bride.
I am persuaded to confess that in a few of these instances I was not
above a snarky little wish to correct the social horizon of
Belknap-Jackson; to make it more broadly accord, as I may say, with
the spirit of American equality for which their forefathers bled and
died on the battlefields of Boston, New York, and Vicksburg.
Not the least of my reward, then, was to see his eyebrows more than
once eloquently raise, as when the cattle-persons, Hank and Buck,
appeared in suits of decent black, or when the driver chap Pierce
entered with his quite obscure mother on his arm, or a few other
cattle and horse persons with whom the Honourable George had palled up
during his process of going in for America.
This laxity I felt that the Earl of Brinstead and his bride could
amply afford, while for myself I had soundly determined that Red Gap
should henceforth be without "sets.
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