If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr.
Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a
milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds
in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he
had gone "dirt cheap." "Only two months to-morrow," he said. "It seems a
age."
Those who believe in "love at first sight" take the view that marriages are
made in heaven and that we only come to earth to fulfil our destiny.
Johnson, who was an excellent husband to the elderly Mrs. Porter, scoffed
at that view and held that love is only the accident of circumstance. But
though that is the sensible view, there are cases like those of Dante and
Beatrice and Abelard and Heloise, in which the passion does seem to touch
the skies. In those cases, however, it rarely ends happily. A more hum-drum
way of falling in love seems better fitted to earthly conditions. The
method of Sir Thomas More was perhaps the most original on record. He
preferred the second of three sisters and was about to marry her when it
occurred to him--But let me quote the words in which Roper, his son-in-law,
records the incident:
"And all beit his mynde most served him to the seconde daughter, for that
he thoughte her the fayrest and best favoured, yet when he considered that
it woulde be bothe great griefe and some shame alsoe to the eldest to see
her yonger sister in mariage preferred before her, he then of a certeyn
pittye framed his fancye towardes her, and soon after maryed her.
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