| They sit, side by side, in the gig, sir, as solemn As Marriage and Death in a newspaper column. |
How they ever came together, except by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, I cannot divine, for certainly without disrespect, I may say, that however charming Mrs. Castellanus may be, she is not
| A beauty ripe as harvest, Whose skin is whiter than a swan all over, Than silver, snow, or lilies— |
nor has she
|
————————a soft lip Would tempt you to eternity of kissing, And flesh that melteth in the touch to blood. |
But we may cease to wonder at their union, when we reflect on the couples we see every day,—so totally dissimilar in taste and external appearance, that we may almost believe with St. Pierre that we love only those who form a contrast to ourselves. "Love," he says, "results only from contrasts, and the greater they are, the more powerful is its energy. I could easily demonstrate this by the evidence of a thousand historical facts. It is well known, for example, to what mad excess of passion that tall and clumsy soldier, Mark Anthony, loved and was beloved by Cleopatra; not the person whom our sculptors represent of a tall, portly, Sabine figure, but the Cleopatra whom historians paint as little, lively and sprightly, carried in disguise about the streets of Alexandria, in the night time, packed up in a parcel of goods on the shoulders of Apollodorus, to keep an assignation with Julius Cæsar."
NUGATOR.
| 1 Nay, what's incredible, alack! I hardly hear a woman's clack.—Swift. |