“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 to 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 instant 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-voiced 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.