well have been
the house of Capulet: there was the clambering vine reaching up like a
pliant silken ladder; there, near by, was the low-hung balcony, wanting
only the slight girlish figure--immortal shape of fire and dew!--to make
the illusion perfect.

I do not know what suggested it; perhaps it was something in the play
I had just witnessed--it is not always easy to put one's finger on the
invisible electric thread that runs from thought to thought--but as
I sauntered on I fell to thinking of the ill-assorted marriages I had
known. Suddenly there hurried along the gravelled path which crossed
mine obliquely a half-indistinguishable throng of pathetic men and
women: two by two they filed before me, each becoming startlingly
distinct for an instant as they passed--some with tears, some with
hollow smiles, and some with firm-set lips, bearing their fetters with
them. There was little Alice chained to old Bowlsby; there was Lucille,
"a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," linked forever to the dwarf
Perrywinkle; there was my friend Porphyro, the poet, with his delicate
genius shrivelled in the glare of the youngest Miss Lucifer's eyes;
there they were, Beauty and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and
Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age--
Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have
been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted a moment to
let the weird shapes drift by. As the last of the train melted into the
darkness, my vagabond fancy went wandering back to the theatre and the
play I had seen--Romeo and Juliet. Taking a lighter tint, but still of
the same sober color, my reflections continued.

What a different kind of woman Juliet would have been if she had not
fallen in love with Romeo, but had bestowed her affection on some
thoughtful and stately signior--on one of the Delia Scalas, for example!
What Juliet needed was a firm and gentle hand to tame her high spirit
without breaking a pinion. She was a little too--vivacious, you might
say--"gushing" would perhaps be the word if you were speaking of a
modern maiden with so exuberant a disposition as Juliet's. She was
too romantic, too blossomy, too impetuous, too wilful; old Capulet had
brought her up injudiciously, and Lady Capulet was a nonentity. Yet in
spite of faults of training and some slight inherent flaws of character,
Juliet was a superb creature; there was a fascinating dash in