Wedlock

     In old days, when Hollywood directors wanted to portray a marriage, they turned to the high-church Anglican language and form, so that the priest would unite the couple in “holy WEDLOCK.”  Something of the sense of holiness yet remains among even secular people, who will often don the garb and assume the language of the old rites, rather like people who get up in colonial costumes to reenact some scene from the American revolution, without really committing themselves to try to feel what the soldiers felt, to read what they read, and to believe what they believed.
     It’s been noted that in 1900, very few American children were born out of WEDLOCK.  Now, people do not always behave themselves, and the poor at all times are living on the edge, and not just financially, so that there was a small but appreciable difference between the number of children born out of wedlock and the number conceived out of wedlock.
     “Hello, Clem,” says the oldest brother of three, as they stand at…