the background, and alas!
how the romance was dispelled when a _dual_ appeared!
_She had eloped with two men!_"

Every reader will laugh at this denouement, and that laugh is eloquent
proof that in saying there can be no real love without absolute
monopolism of one heart by another I simply formulated and emphasized
a truth which we all feel instinctively. Dalton's tale also brings out
very clearly the world-wide difference between a romantic love-story
and a story of romantic love.

Turning from the Old World to the New we find stories illustrating the
same amusing disregard of amorous monopolism. Rink, in his book of
Eskimo tales and traditions, cites a song which voices the reveries of
a Greenland bachelor:

"I am going to leave the country--in a large ship--for
that sweet little woman. I'll try to get some beads--of
those that look like boiled ones. Then when I've gone
abroad--I shall return again. My nasty little
relatives--I'll call them all to me--and give them a
good thrashing--with a big rope's end. Then I'll go to
marry--_taking two at once_. That darling little
creature--shall only wear clothes of the spotted
seal-skins, and the other little pet shall have clothes
of the young hooded seals."

Powers (227) tells a tragic tale of the California Indians, which in
some respects reminds one of the man who jumped into a bramble-bush
and scratched out both his eyes.

"There was once a man who loved two women and wished to
marry them. Now these two women were magpies, but they
loved him not, and laughed his wooing to scorn. Then he
fell into a rage and cursed these two women, and went
far away to the North. There he set the world on fire,
then made for himself a tule boat, wherein he escaped
to sea, and was never seen more."

Belden, who spent twelve years among the Sioux and other Indians,
writes (302):

"I once knew a young man who had about a dozen horses
he had captured at different times from the enemy, and
who fell desperately in love with a girl of nineteen.
_She loved him in return_, but said she could not bear
to leave her tribe, and go to a Santee village, unless
her two sisters, aged respectively fifteen and
seventeen, went with her. Determined to have his
sweetheart, the next time the warrior visited the
Yankton village he took several ponies with him, an