Moon at the present moment. Our own world-scorning
Winterbottom has even dared to say, `For a certain rare and fine
physical type polygamy is but the realization of the variety of females,
as comradeship is the realization of the variety of males.'
In any case, the type that tends to variety is recognized by all
authoritative inquirers. Such a type, if the widower of a negress,
does in many ascertained cases espouse ~en seconde noces~ an albino;
such a type, when freed from the gigantic embraces of a female Patagonian,
will often evolve from its own imaginative instinct the consoling figure of
an Eskimo. To such a type there can be no doubt that the prisoner belongs.
If blind doom and unbearable temptation constitute any slight excuse
for a man, there is no doubt that he has these excuses.
"Earlier in the inquiry the defence showed real chivalric
ideality in admitting half of our story without further dispute.
We should like to acknowledge and imitate so eminently large-hearted
a style by conceding also that the story told by Curate Percy about
the canoe, the weir, and the young wife seems to be substantially true.
Apparently Smith did marry a young woman he had nearly run down in a boat;
it only remains to be considered whether it would not have been
kinder of him to have murdered her instead of marrying her.
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