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[346] about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the candidates for double matrimonial honors went trooping out to their cemetery on the Tan Yard Branch to be married over again. If there is anything in omens, never were nuptials more inauspicious. The ceremonies were interrupted by a thunder storm that drenched the composite bridal party and all the spectators — the “shepherd” taking care to shelter himself under a big umbrella that one of his worshipers held over him. Mammy, who tells me all the negro news, says that thirty-three couples were married. Among them was our Charity, who six years ago was lawfully married in the Methodist church here, to Mr. Waddy's Peter. I remember how father joked Peter, when he came to ask for Charity, about having him for a “nigger-in-law,” but now, Charity has taken to herself Hamp, one of father's plantation hands — a big, thick-lipped fellow, not half as respectable looking as Peter — but there is no accounting for taste. Several other marriages of the same “double” kind took place, which would bring the saintly doctor under the laws against bigamy, if anybody cared enough about the matter to prosecute him. I was amused at Charity when she came home in the evening. She went about her work as usual, but when I stepped into the back porch to get some water, she stopped in the midst of it to tell me that she now had two names, like white folks. “Oh,” said I, laughing, “what is your new name?”
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