PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation. . . . Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.
Was his life nothing? Had he nothing to show, no work? He did not count his work, anyone could have done it. What had he known, but the long, marital embrace with his wife. Curious, that this was what his life amounted to! At any rate, it was something, it was eternal. He would say so to anybody, and be proud of it. He lay with his wife in his arms, and she was still his fulfillment, just the same as ever. And that was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, and he was proud of it.
I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.
As for my wife,
I would you had her spirit in such another;
The third o' th' world is yours, which with a snaffle
You may pace easy, but not such a wife.
Walking helps me a lot to feel alive, and I do this every single day, my wife and I. We have long conversations about nature, and we also walk silently, just contemplating.
Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.