PRETTY BRIDE IN IRONS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 163, 27 November 1912, Page 8

PRETTY BRIDE IN IRONS

Undoubtedly the strangest wedding experienced on record fell to the lot of a young bride and bridegroom the other day.

The bridegroom was Mr. H. Spohm, a prosperous merchant; and the bride, Miss Mary Ilrown, resident in one of the fashionable suburbs of Pittsburg. Spohm and Miss Brown had eloped to Grove City, Pennsylvania, where they were married quietly.

There had been no real opposition to their union to make their elopement necessary, but the young couple believed that would be.the best wav to escape any embarrassing attention on the part of the practical jokers among Mr. bpohm's employees and numerons friends. But they soon found they had under-estimated the patience and ingenuity of these jokers. ° tfo sooner iiad the happy pair returned from a short wedding trip to settle down in their cosy new home in Grafton than a crowd of merrymakers raided Mr. Spohm's office in the citv, captured the: bridegroom, uid placed him in irons in- j side an empty lion's cage which they had borrowed from a circus. Then they drove rapidly'to the little dovecote in Grafton, followed by several brass bands and upwards of two thousand_ cheering friends and spectators. Hearing the clamor in the street, Mrs Spohm ran to the front door, and almost tainted when ske saw her husband loaded with chains inside the iron-barred' and gaudily-painted, lion's cage. The crowd promptly made a dash for the startled bride, but she slammed the door in their faces and barred it. Thinking she had outwitted them. Mrs. Spohm ran to the window of an upper room and laughed. • . ,

Again, however, she had misjudged the. resourcefulness of the enemy, for two ■of Mr. Spohm's employees climbed to the roof of the house and effected an entrance through the gable window. The bride was stum in chains 'beside her husband in the cage, and the strange procession wound its way through the principal street's.'of .both Grafton and Pittsburg,-with blaring brass bands tooting the latest love ditties, while the laughing crowds in the procession and along the streets cheered the caged couple to the echo. . ~,