“Seymour plucked the weeds from the garden of your widowed life before the first blade of grass had pushed up from a newly-made grave. O Inconstancy! O Woman! Of two things, one. Orpheus went to Hell to find his wife. He failed to win her from her refuge in the shades because he looked back to discern her features. Had Euridice retraced the path from Hell without bringing with her surcease from domestic woe, Orpheus would have wished her back down that familiar track. I wish he would pay us another visit. I’d loan him five of mine.” “Which wife would you retain?” asked Catharine Howard. “Catharine,” answered Henry, diplomatically. All three who bore that name beamed with gratification. “Catharine is always at Parr,” continued the king. His fondness for punning nearly proved his undoing. “I’m not below Parr,” angrily exclaimed Catharine of Arragon. “I come before her.” “No, you came,” corrected the king. “It’s merely a question of tense. Many a woman promises to be a sister to the devil who has never received a proposal.” “That’s a good one on you!” laughed the fool. “Her Grace of Arragon promised to be a sister to you! What do you say to that?” “My answer is written in history. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,’ for which ‘blessed be the name of the Lord.’ I replaced my wives, so that the supply would always equal the demand. I believed that as long as the Lord took, it was my duty to take.” The king paused long enough to drink a cup of pink tea and to eat some breaded calves’ brains for inspiration. “When trouble comes,” continued Henry, “some people fly to matrimony, thinking drink too vulgar.” “Your troubles have been many, judging by your marital intemperance.” “They were, but my troubles always came singly,” chuckled the king. “As fast as I executed one, another came, but I made sure I was off with the old head before I coveted the new.” “The only bright thing an American can remember to have heard Punch say is ‘don’t’ when matrimony is on the horizon, but then Punch is English and England has no Ali Ben Theodore—peace to his Strenuosity—to turn the throne into a pulpit for dissertations on vital statistics in the hope that he may make census taking an unnecessary burden of government. Modern philologists were seriously considering the advisability of eliminating the word ‘papa’ from the dictionary, when the leading exponent of the life effective raised the question as to why mamma’s lap wasn’t filled. When the president becomes advance agent for the stork hope is born, but if the stork continues to be derelict in its duties, we might give the eagle a trial in an endeavor to have this statistical indictment set aside.” “What does Mr. Roosevelt know about the rights of unattached bachelors?” asked Catharine the Third. “He isn’t a bachelor and never was one; he was born domestic and to the domestic man nothing ever happens—except the buying of more cradles.”