Fart Freely

I will not subscribe to baby-blue-eyed Ben’s adjuration to fart proudly. But I do think there is a magical point in the life of any wedded, or at any rate inveterately connected couple when it becomes a thing of course to fart freely in each other’s company. The moment steals upon the couple as the fog does, on little cat feet, unexpected and unforseen. I have no doubt that it occurs by accident. It would be a quite arrogant person who thinks their farts so redolent of self-assurance that they can issue forth without concern for whatsoever malodorous consequences the farts might have. By accident, then, the fart comes, and the other of the pair giggles aloud or perhaps expresses their own airy agreement that unexpressed wind will give “great present Pain” and may also occasion “future Diseases, such as habitual Cholics, Ruptures, Tympanies, &c., often destructive of the Constitution, & sometimes of Life itself.” Such wisdom does baby-blue-eyed Ben himself deliver freely to the unfastidious reader! And then the symphony of farts can proceed until, firm in the knowledge that the other person accepts the reciprocity of exchange, farting freely becomes the final effect of wedded bliss.