Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/86

 natural one, then nature disarranged its own scheme beforehand by making woman's sexual life twenty or thirty or even forty years shorter than man's.

At the present time males and females in the civilized world are about equal in number. This, too, is taken for proof that nature favored monogamy. It is a fact, on the other hand, observable in practical life as well as by medical investigation, that a woman is well able physically to be the wife of two men at the same time.

There are no healthier and more beautiful women, of their kind, than the Tedas of Asia who marry besides their chief-husband all his brothers, no matter how many he has got.

We do not go so far as to advocate polyandry. Polyandry is a condition based on a low state of civilization. But basing our proposition on physical grounds, we venture to assert that tetragamy, reorganized and protected by law, would be a married state doing away with most of the evils of monogamy from the man's standpoint, while contributing to woman's happiness.

We propose the introduction of a new form of marriage on the following lines. Instead of one man marrying one woman for better or worse, we propose that two men, friends of course, marry one woman, always a young and healthy person, with this understanding:

After the woman has reached a certain age, the two friends shall be at liberty to 82