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Alabaster Blue Sectory 14
Page 11
The campaign in Bucharest was at first attended by a certain measure of success, owing to the attitude of M. Bratiano, the Premier; of M. Carp, a former Prime Minister, and of M. Marghiloman, the present leader of the Conservative Opposition. But many influential Liberals have already associated themselves with the programme of the action advocated by M. Take Jonesco, the chief of the Conservative-Democratic Party, and of M. Filipescu, a former Conservative Minister, whose advocacy of a forward policy threatens to cause a split in the Conservative camp. The great bulk of the political world desires to profit by the European crisis to secure Transylvania, the only difference of opinion being with regard to the advisability of immediate action. The consultative committee of the Conservative Party has passed a resolution demanding the abandonment of neutrality.
"Oh dear!" Celia said to herself, "I am sure Freshitt Hall would have been pleasanter than this." She thought of the white freestone, the pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rose-bush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately odorous petals--Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias had been different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.
One wife, however, does not suffice to fill the nest with eggs; and the stickleback is a firm believer in the advantages of large families. So, as soon as his first mate has laid all her spawn, he sets out once more in search of another. Thus he goes on until the home is quite full of eggs, bringing back one wife after another, in proportion to his success in wooing and fighting. For, like almost all polygamists, your stickleback is a terrible fighter. The males join wager of battle with one another for possession of their mates; in their fierce duels they make fearful use of the formidable spines on their backs, sometimes entirely ripping up and cutting to pieces their ill-fated adversary. The spines thus answer to the spurs of the gamecock or the antlers of the deer; they are masculine weapons in the struggle for mates. Indeed, you may take it for granted that brilliant colors and decorative adjuncts in animals almost invariably go with irascible tempers, pugnacious habits, and the practice of fighting for the possession of the harem. The consequence is, with the sticklebacks, that many males get killed during the struggle for supremacy, so that the survivors wed half a dozen wives each, like little Turks that they are in their watery seraglios. Only the most beautiful and courageous fish succeed in gaining a harem of their own: and thus the wager of battle tells in the end for the advantage of the race, by eliminating the maimed, the ugly, and the cowardly, and encouraging the strong, the handsome, the enterprising, and the valiant. This is nature's way of preventing degeneracy.
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