But, thus to enter into the happiness of another, one must see and feel, as if for himself, some good and sufficient reason for that happiness; and the deep, insoluble mystery essential to all proper betrothals is that this good and sufficient reason is not necessarily visible: these two are happy-mad, and how shall anybody who is sane enter into their lunacy?
Mr. Harvey Todd, 2d,--to take the first name that comes to mind,--has become engaged to Miss Margaret Lemon; Miss Lemon to Mr. Todd. Well and good. Nature, which, for some reason that mankind has long curiously and vainly sought to penetrate, wishes to continue the human race, is, one may believe, reasonably well satisfied. It is one job among many. But the satisfaction of Mr. Todd and Miss Lemon, if it could be put to such haberdashery use, would girdle the Equator, and the ends, tied in a true lover's knot, would flutter beyond the farthest visible star. Men and women have become engaged in the past; men and women will become engaged in the future; but this engagement of Harvey Todd and Margaret Lemon is and will ever remain unique--and so whoever is now called upon to appraise one party to this wonder and congratulate the other, may well be troubled. He is not so much afraid of what he may do and say,--for any man may hope to achieve a hard, quick, almost sobbing pressure of the hand and a few muttered words,--as of the way, in spite of himself, that he will look when he does and says it; there, indeed, the amateur actor profits by his hobby. There is, to be sure, the saving chance that Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd) may so pleasurably affect him that the ordeal will be less difficult than he anticipates: there is even the rare chance that he may _instantly and completely agree with Mr. Todd's estimate of Miss Lemon_; but this is the happy-madness itself, and certainly not desirable under the circumstances. There is the possibility, even more rare and less desirable, that Miss Lemon, seeing him for the first time, _will instantly and completely prefer him to Mr. Todd_. There is the possibility that he may recoil with horror from Miss Lemon (or Mr. Todd), or be recoiled from, or that both may recoil simultaneously, falling over, figuratively, on their backs, and being picked up and carried away unconscious, and in opposite directions, by surprised onlookers. His whole nature may, in short, instinctively run toward, or away from, the beloved; and between these extremes lies a gamut of intermediary emotions, which at the moment he would hardly wish to uncover. This stiff and geometrical smile, he asks himself at the worst, can it deceive anybody? this hypocritical mutter of congratulation, does it proceed from his own or an ice chest? Nor is he much relieved when Mr. Todd or Miss Lemon, as the case may be, proves how genuine appeared his smile, how sincere his mutter, by asking him in affectionate detail what he thinks of the other--a procedure which should be legally forbidden the newly engaged, under penalty of being refused a marriage license for at least ten years.