"If it were indeed as you suggest, the Universe would soon
be depopulated. No, no; neighbourhood is needless for the union
of hearts; and the birth of children is too important a matter
to have been allowed to depend upon such an accident as proximity.
You cannot be ignorant of this. Yet since you are pleased
to affect ignorance, I will instruct you as if you were the veriest
baby in Lineland. Know, then, that marriages are consummated
by means of the faculty of sound and the sense of hearing.
"You are of course aware that every Man has two mouths or voices
-- as well as two eyes -- a bass at one and a tenor at the other
of his extremities. I should not mention this, but that I have been
unable to distinguish your tenor in the course of our conversation."
I replied that I had but one voice, and that I had not been aware
that his Royal Highness had two. "That confirms my impression,"
said the King, "that you are not a Man, but a feminine Monstrosity
with a bass voice, and an utterly uneducated ear. But to continue.
"Nature having herself ordained that every Man should wed two wives --"
"Why two?" asked I.
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