These evasions of the ordinary modes of marriage are to be deplored
for the reason that nearly all of them are proposed by bad men. If the
man behave well he has a character to which he can refer, and he can
say: "If you want to inquire about me there is a list of names of
people in the town or neighborhood where I live." No; the heroes of
escapades are nearly all either bigamists, or libertines, or
drunkards, or defrauders, or first-class scoundrels of some sort. They
have no character to lose. They may be dressed in the height of
fashion, may be cologned, and pomatumed, and padded, and
diamond-ringed, and flamboyant-cravatted, until they bewitch the eye
and intoxicate the olfactories; but they are double-distilled extracts
of villainy, moral dirt and blasphemy. Beware of them. "Stolen waters
are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not
that the dead are there."