t to sit down, when a button
became detached from some portion of his raiment and rolled upon the
floor. He picked the button up and observed that he would keep it for
his housekeeper to sew on, and, while speaking on the strangeness of
housekeeping and buttons, he came slowly to the subject of matrimony--

"Like so many other customs," said he, "marriage is not native to the
human race, nor is it altogether peculiar to it. So far as I am aware
no person was ever born married, and in extreme youth bachelors and
spinsters are so common as to call for no remark. Nature strives, not
for duality as in the case of the Siamese Twins but for individuality.
We are all born strongly separated, and I am often inclined to fancy
that this ceremony of joining appears very like flying in the face of
Providence. I have also thought, on the other hand, that the
segregation of humanity into male and female is not an economic
practice, but I fear the foundation of the sex habit is by this time so
deeply trenched in our natures as to be practically ineradicable.

"Throughout nature the male and female habit is usual: all beasts are
born of one or the other gender, and this is also the case in the
vegetable kingdom: but I am not aware that the ridiculous and wasteful
preparations with which we encumber matrimony obtain also among plants
and animals. Certainly, among some animals courtship, as we understand
it, is practised--Wolves, for instance, are an extraordinarily acute
people who make good husbands and fathers, and in these relations they
display a tenderness and courtesy which one only acquainted with their
out-of-door manners would scarcely credit them with. Their courtship
is conducted under circumstances of extraordinary rigour. A he-wolf
who becomes enamoured of a female from another tribe is forced, in
attempting to wed her, to set his life upon the venture, and,
disdaining all the fury of her numerous relatives, he must forcibly
detach her from her family, kill or maim all her other suitors, sustain
in a wounded and desperate condition a prolonged chase over the
snow-clad Russian Steppes, and, ultimately, consummate his nuptials, if
he can, with as many limbs as his lady's family have failed to collect
off him. This is a courtship admirably fitted to evolve a hardy and
Spartan race strong in the virtues of reliance and self-control.

"Spiders, on the other hand, are a people whom I despise on several
counts, but must admire o