"'Now if there is one thing more certain than another in the whole matter of marriage it is this, that the inexperienced _fiancé_ generally makes the worst husband. Being familiar only with the ways and manners of men, he misunderstands, misconstrues, and misjudges most of the actions or words of his young wife. He is positively shocked at her impetuous tenderness, and takes many a manifestation of her love for him as mere base flattery or as hypocrisy. Not infrequently he ceases treating her as his wife, and goes on living with her as his sister; and, since the wife, more loyal to nature, rarely omits recouping herself, her husband acts the part of certain gentlemen of Constantinople. It is thus that the famous _ménage à trois_ does not, properly speaking, exist in England. In England it is always a _ménage à deux_. "'If, then, instead of continuing marriage; if, instead of maintaining an institution so absurd and so contrary to the nature of an Englishman, we dropped it altogether; if, instead of compulsory wedding ceremonies, we introduced that most sacred of all things: FREE LOVE; the advantages accruing to the nation as a whole, and to each person constituting that nation, would be immense. "'Free Love, ay: that is the only solution. Nature knows what she is after. The blue-eyed crave the black-eyed ones; the fair-haired desire the dark-haired; the tall ones the small; the thin ones the thick; the unlettered ones the lettered unfettered ones. This is Nature. "'If these affinities are given free scope, the result will be a nation of giants and heroes. Affinities produce Infinities. Free Trade in wedlock is the great panacea. Since the only justifiable ground for marriage is--the child, how dare one marry anyone else than the person with whom he or she is most likely to have the finest babe? That person is clearly indicated by Nature. How, then, can Society, Law, or the Church claim the right to interfere in the choice? "'I know that many of you will say: "Oh, if men should take their wives only from Free Love, they would take a different one every quarter." But if you come to think of it, it is not so at all. If men took their wives out of Free Love, they could not so much as think of taking another wife every quarter. For, which other wife could they take? There would be none left for them, since all the other women would, by the hypothesis, long have been taken up by _their_ Free Lovers. Moreover, if a man takes a wife out of Free Love, he sticks to her just because he loves her. Had he not loved her, he would not have taken her; and if he should cease loving her, he would find no other woman to join him, owing to his proved fickleness.