"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 and 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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