The Wedding Knell

The Wedding Knell is an 1837 short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This story might be horrifying to the young and perhaps to those who have not come to a peaceful acceptance of death, but it's a solid story of one of life's truths brought to this elderly couple on their wedding day. A lost youth certainly doesn't mean that all is lost. My favorite quote: "The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth."

You can read it online here. It begins,

There is a certain church in the city of New York which I have always regarded with peculiar interest, on account of a marriage there solemnized, under very singular circumstances, in my grandmother's girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene, and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred, I am not antiquarian enough to know; nor would it be worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error, by reading the date of its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church, surrounded by an inclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the tributes of private affection, or more splendid memorials of historic dust. With such a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath its tower, one would be willing to connect some legendary interest.

The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement, though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part, and forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman.

You can listen to it here: