Now it might have been supposed that a Circle -- proud of his ancestry
and regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter
in a Chief Circle -- would be more careful than any other to choose
a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so.
The care in choosing a Regular wife appears to diminish as one rises
in the social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles,
who had hopes of generating an Equilateral Son, to take a wife
who reckoned a single Irregularity among her Ancestors;
a Square or Pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily
on the rise, does not inquire above the five-hundredth generation;
a Hexagon or Dodecagon is even more careless of the wife's pedigree;
but a Circle has been known deliberately to take a wife
who has had an Irregular Great-Grandfather, and all because
of some slight superiority of lustre, or because of the charms
of a low voice -- which, with us, even more than you,
is thought "an excellent thing in Woman".
Such ill-judged marriages are, as might be expected, barren,
if they do not result in positive Irregularity or in
diminution of sides; but none of these evils have hitherto proved
sufficiently deterrent.
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