Legends of the Shawangunk2 JR.pdf - Friends of the Sabbath ...

Greycourt Inn. 47
feel the promptings of the tender sentiment; and fortunately for him, Providence had
provided a trim and comely lass who was to reciprocate his passion.
The youthful and imaginative reader has doubtless already pictured their long and
sentimental walks of these lovers under the sombre shadows of the forest by moonlight;
or the more cosy and confidential talks seated on the slab bench before the roaring
fire-place after the old folks had retired, while the wolves howled without, and the
panther screamed from the lonely glen; and has fancied the friends of the lady at first
objecting to the match, but finally, one and all, brought over in favor of the Irishman.
And so the story would read, if it were the work of fiction; but the stern logic of facts
compels the statement that there were no friends to conciliate, and no old folks to
propitiate, for the bride was as friendless and portionless as the groom himself.
Like her future liege lord, Sarah Wells, by the stern and exacting laws of the period,
had been reduced to involuntary servitude to a landed proprietor on Long Island. By the
vicissitudes of fortune her master had lost his property, and Sarah had made her way by
the assistance of some friendly Indians to the neighborhood of Goshen. Here her dusky
friends had built her a log hut, and supplied her for a time with venison, until chance
threw her in the way of William Bull.
The marriage ceremony took place in the Cromline log palace, a local magistrate
officiating. Bull was an Episcopalian; his creed required the publication of the bans three
times, but this formulary was looked upon with disfavor, inasmuch as its observance
would defer the wedding-day. The magistrate was equal to the emergency—he could
both satisfy the scruples of William and promptly tie the nuptial knot at the same time.
So the magistrate went to the rear door of the Cromline mansion and proclaimed
aloud to the trees of the forest—“If anyone has any objection to the marriage of William
Bull and Sarah Wells, let him now make it known, or forever keep silent;” and having so
proclaimed, shut the door and passed to the front of the house. This he did three times.
The forest trees offering no objection, he commanded the high contracting parities to
stand up before him; and then and there was performed the first wedding ceremony,
according to the usages of civilized society, in the town of Goshen.
The wedding-feast at the Cromline cabin absorbed the talk for weeks for the entire
settlement; a slab table, made like a bench, without a spread of any kind, was loaded
down with refreshments. These were of a plain but substantial sort. There was the
toothsome and tender venison done up, in pot-roasts and tempting steaks; there was the
succulent and juicy wild-turkey, hot and steaming, and served up in a dish of its own
gravy; there was the rich and tempting corn, grown in the natural meadows on the
“drowned lands,” and made into pone, which served in lieu of wedding-cake, while
metheglin was the principal beverage that washed them down. The plates on which the
repast was served varied in size and pattern, some being of pewter, but more of wood;
their knives were mainly butcher knives, while their forks were sharpened