ABSTRACT
You go to the tea-shop, and get your moist sugar. You take it on the understanding that it is moist sugar. But it isn’t anything of the sort. It’s a compound of adulterations made up to look like sugar. You shut your eyes to that awkward fact, and swallow your adulterated mess in various articles of food … You go to the marriage-shop, and get a wife. You take her on the understanding—let us say—that she has lovely yellow hair, that she has an exquisite complexion, that her figure is the perfection of plumpness, and that she is just tall enough to carry the plumpness off. You bring her home; and you discover that it’s the old story of the sugar again. You wife is an adulterated article. Her lovely yellow hair is—dye. Her exquisite skin is pearl powder. Her plumpness is—padding. And three inches of her height are—in the boot-maker’s heels. Shut your eyes and swallow your adulterated wife as you swallow your adulterated sugar—and, I tell you again, you are one of the few men who can try the marriage experiment with a fair chance of success. 1
