A SAD STORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1065, 4 July 1912, Page 4

A SAD STORY.

WHAT THE TITANIC DID

“Oh, Dan, don’t you suppose we can ? It would be fine.” “I don’t know, dear ; I’ll ask dad in the morning.” “Just think, Dan, dear, they will be the first moving pictures ever taken of a wedding, and think how nice it will be for us afterwards to look at the pictures and see everything at our wedding just as it was.”

Only a few weeks ago this conversation took place in New York. Little then did young Daniel Marvin and the girl who, on the following day, became his wife, dream of the dreadful tragedy which was to bring to an abrupt end their honeymoon. It was the idea of pretty Mary Farquharson, the bride-to-be, to have moving pictures taken of her wedding. Daniel’s father was the head of one of the largest moving picture concerns, and many times had she been down to the studio and had seen just how il was done.

When Daniel returned to bis home that evening to spend the last night he was ever to as “just their boy” he half-laughiugly told his father ot Mary's request. The next day, which was 12th March, Daniel Warner Marvin, the son of Mr and Mrs H. NMarvin, ot 346 Riverside Drive, New York, and Mary Graham C. Farquharson, ot 317 Riverside Drive, were married. The Rev. John L. Caughey, pastor of the Harlem Presbyterian Church, performed the ceremony. Then the wedding was gone through with again. The only difference was the presence of a moving picture machine and a man who turned away industriously on the crank until the last guest had kissed the bride and congratulated the groom. Even before the day of the wedding the young man had made all his arrangements. The boat on which they were to sail left on the 13th. Abroad, Marvin and his bride were going to visit Loudon, Paris, Berlin and one or two of the other capitals of Europe, and then — and this was to be the finest part of the whole honeymoon —they were to come home on the very first trip the new giantess of the seas, the Titanic, was to make. If only one of the million and one little things and often come to wreck the best-laid plans had happened the sad end ot this little story would never need to be written.

It isn’t necessary, after all, to tell the rest of the story. The world knows now the story of that last fateful, fearful night of the Titanic,

On the Carpathia was the little bride who had laughed as the moving picture machine spied on her on her wedding day, a widow now, bowed with frightful sorrow. But she brought back with her the memory of the parting from her husband, to which she will cling all the days of her life. On the night the Titanic went to her doom the young couple walked arm in arm along the deserted decks, long after the others had retired for the night. For such is the privilege of the honeymoon.

Suddenly there came a shock. The whole ship quivered from end to end. Instinctively the bride clung to her husband. He was young and strong and fearless. In the first few minutes that followed, the shock of the collision with the iceberg, and betore the panic ot fear had filled the ship, the young husband, with rare foresight, hurried with his bride to their stateroom. There he bundled his wife in the warmest clothing he could find. Then he rushed with her to the deck, where the lifeboats were beiug loaded. The bride cluug to him. The young mau argued, tried to force her into the boat. She refused to leave him.

“Go, dear, and I will follow,” he said, over and over again, but it was not until a sailor came to his aid that he was able to place his wife in a lifeboat.

As the girl widow came tottering and sobbing down the gangway of the Carpathia and fell into the arms of her mother, she repeated over and over again, “He tried to follow.”

As she became calmer, and could tell the whole story of that dreadful night, she told how her husband, brave to the last, had forced her into a boat against her will, and then, while the boat was still in sight, had climbed to the rail of the sinking Titanic, and. calling out her name in the dark, plunged into the icy waters, never to rise from their grasp.

The husband never saw —never will see —the moving pictures of the wedding. But some day, perhaps, the widowed bride, when time has lessened the shock of her grief, may find in seeing them some solace and some comfort.