I Forbid the Banns! — page 122: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘CHAPTER XVII. ON THE TEMPTATION OF FAUST. T was a curious position for a man ‘to find himself in. Had it been the other way there are the strongest reasons for believing that it would not have been without precedent. He was a moral man, as well as an Englishman, and he was thus led to regard with extreme aversion the idea of being the pioneer of a new cult—if the girl’s theories could be called a cult. He could not see that there was any more excellent way of living with a woman than by being bound to her bya legal marriage performed by a licensed clergyman of the Established Church, wearing a surplice, and holding open an awkward oblong book of common prayer, from which, with chilling indifference, he reads certain phrases of no particular delicacy. | All this, he knew, was disagreeable—almost ridiculous ; but it was essential to the comfort of matrimony and to the legitimacy of offspring. It must be faced, just as the dentist must be faced. This is precisely what he had always felt on the subject of marrying and giving in marriage. But here was this girl, whom, with all his soul, he hoped to marry, endeavoring to show him a more excellent way of attaining to the happiness of marriage than by submit- ting to any ceremony. He reflected, as he looked far away across:the smooth waters, over which that prodigal millionaire the sun was (E(0) flinging his gold, that, if he had come to the girl speaking 112 COMIC LOOKS