LIONEL.--"Monster! Hold your tongue. /A propos/ of marriage, why are you
still single?"

VANCE.--"Because I have no wish to be doubled up! Moreover, man is like
a napkin, the more neatly the housewife doubles him, the more carefully
she lays him on the shelf. Neither can a man once doubled know how often
he may be doubled. Not only his wife folds him in two, but every child
quarters him into a new double, till what was a wide and handsome
substance, large enough for anything in reason, dwindles into a pitiful
square that will not cover one platter,--all puckers and creases, smaller
and smaller with every double, with every double a new crease. Then, my
friend, comes the washing-bill! and, besides all the hurts one receives
in the mangle, consider the hourly wear and tear of the linen-press! In
short, Shakspeare vindicates the single life, and depicts the double in
the famous line, which is no doubt intended to be allegorical of
marriage,

"'Double, double, toil and trouble.'

Besides, no single man can be fairly called poor. What double man can
with certainty be called rich? A single man can lodge in a garret, and
dine on a herring: nobody knows; nobody cares. Let him marry, and he
invites the world to witness where he lodges, and how he dines. The
first necessary a wife demands is the most ruinous, the most indefinite
superfluity; it is Gentility according to what her neighbours call
genteel. Gentility commences with the honeymoon; it is its shadow, and
lengthens as the moon declines. When the honey is all gone, your bride
says, 'We can have our tea without sugar when quite alone, love; but, in
case Gentility drop in, here's a bill for silver sugar-tongs!' That's