I Forbid the Banns! — page 309: what you’re looking at

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

ON BEING A PERSONAGE. 299 him in heaven. What would happen then no one seemed exactly to know; but there was a vague belief that the moralities would be carefully respected. Then there was the sublime question of the man and woman who had been mistaken in their affinities on earth, but who were carefully awaited by their affinities in another world. There seemed to bea tacit understanding that the waiting affinities would not mind the others having lived together for half a century or so on earth, which showed that the affinities were not particular, but of an extremely obliging nature. There were also the ladies in the sect who declared that they had had repeated conversations with their affinities who were in another world. It was only by the anticipa- tion of such sublime moments that they dragged on their existence by the side of their fleshly husbands, they said. If one might judge from the nature of the reported con- versation of the affinities they were a commonplace lot. The fleshly husbands could give them points, a youth remarked to Bertha in an undertone, after listening to the discourse of one of these ladies. Others had had visits from their affinities—usually by night ; for it seems that the affinities are fondest of the night for paying hurried calls. Their appearance to the ladies who were describing these mysteries in subdued tones, but with infinite expression, brought before Bertha’s eyes a vision of a badly burning night-light. The precise result of these mystic visits was Stpedl in obscurity, but it was inferred that the affinities had gone away without a stain on their character. Indeed, so far as could be gathered, the affinities were incapable of anything that was not strictly moral—a fact which was considered in some directions rather hard on the affinities, and, perhaps, on those whom they visited. Bertha turned away from all this jargon—from all this concealment of a divine truth beneath the tawdry garments EOMMIELYOOlKS. EC)