"You carry your affected simplicity too far",
he cried. "How can there be a completely harmonious union
without the combination of the Four in One, viz. the Bass and Tenor
of the Man and the Soprano and Contralto of the two Women?"
"But supposing," said I, "that a man should prefer one wife or three?"
"It is impossible," he said; "it is as inconceivable as that
two and one should make five, or that the human eye should see
a Straight Line." I would have interrupted him; but he proceeded
as follows:
"Once in the middle of each week a Law of Nature compels us
to move to and fro with a rhythmic motion of more than usual violence,
which continues for the time you would take to count
a hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance,
at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the Universe
pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest,
fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment
that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation
of Bass to Treble, of Tenor to Contralto, that oftentimes
the Loved Ones, though twenty thousand leagues away,
recognize at once the responsive note of their destined Lover; and,
penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, Love unites the three.
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