A Victorian Bride

It was a lovely June day in 1900 . . . my bridesmaid, a dear friend since childhood, had spoken of the joy she felt for my sake. Tears had come to her eyes. "Oh, dear," she said, "we can't have this. Please. Stand up. Take in the light." The cameraman, my cousin Benjamin, the family eccentric, winked and then ducked beneath the dark canopy of his camera, holding the flash high. And in the sudden flash I seemed to see myself in a kind of bodiless radiance, as if from the distance of years.

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