to continue.

"Nature having herself ordained that every Man should wed two wives--"
"Why two?" asked I. "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. The marriage in
that instance consummated results in a threefold Male and Female
offspring which takes its place in Lineland."

"What! Always threefold?" said I. "Must one wife then always have
twins?"

"Bass-voice Monstrosity! yes," replied the King. "How else could the
balance of the Sexes be maintained, if two girls were not born for
every boy? Would you ignore the very Alphabet of Nature?" He ceased,
speechless for fury; and some time elapsed before I could induce him to
resume his narrative.

"You will not, of course, suppose that every bachelor among us finds
his mates at the first wooing in this universal Marriage Chorus. On
the contrary, the process is by most of us many times repeated. Few
are the hearts whose happy lot is at once to recognize in each other's
voice the partner intended for them by Providence, and to fly into a
reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. With most of us the
courtship is of long duration. The Wooer's voices may perhaps accord
with one of the future wives, but not with both; or not, at first, with
either; or the Soprano and Contralto ma