ECLIPSE OF A HONEYMOON.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1024, 31 October 1882, Page 3

ECLIPSE OF A HONEYMOON.

A contributor to an Australian paper say S : —I lately mentioned a gentleman who hold a plurality of incongruous Government offices in a remote part of Queensland. There being no clergyman within 120 miles of him, he hitches up married couples as registrar. He harnessed together a man and wife the other day, and the ceremony being concluded, the happy pair made for the nearest public house to drink each other's health. About half an hour afterwards, the registrar, who had been in a hurry that morning suddenly remembered that he bad forgotton ar. essential part of the ceremony—he had not pronounced the pair to be man and wife. Panic stricken at the omission and its possible immoral consequences, he rushed from the courthouse, and instinctively made for the" Ram and Rainbow," as a likely retreat for a honeymoon, animated, of course, by a desire to rectify his mistake. Ouvap-

proaching the place, be observed a woman with sti earning ha ir anil dangling shawl brandishing a bottle and cbiising a man round the building. A bvicf inspections disclosed the. fact that they wore the bride and bridegroom. The lady having stopped to take breath, she was informed of her semimarried condition, and cooey'd to the pursued, who ventured back under a flag of truce in the shape of a safe conduct by his worship. The courthouse was revisited, the mystic words pronounced, and in the same apartment npon the following morning the husband charged the apple of his eye with blacking his eyes, before the man who only yesterday had sanctioned twin hearts to beat in unison.