[Illustration: Explaining the Necessity for a New Bonnet.]
1. LOVE.--Let it ever be remembered that love is one of the most sacred
elements of our nature, and the most dangerous with which to tamper. It is
a very beautiful and delicately contrived faculty, producing the most
delightful results, but easily thrown out of repair--like a tender plant,
the delicate fibers of which incline gradually to entwine themselves around
its beloved one, uniting two willing hearts by a thousand endearing ties,
and making of "twain one flesh"; but they are easily torn asunder, and then
adieu to the joys of connubial bliss! {149}
2. COURTING BY THE QUARTER.--This courting by the quarter, "here a little
and there a little," is one of the greatest evils of the day. This getting
a little in love with Julia, and then a little with Eliza, and a little
more with Mary,--this fashionable flirtation and coquetry of both sexes--is
ruinous to the domestic affections; besides, effectually preventing the
formation of true connubial love. I consider this dissipation of the
affections one of the greatest sins against Heaven, ourselves, and the one
trifled with, that can be committed.
3. FRITTERING AWAY AFFECTIONS.--Young men commence courting long before
they think of marrying, and where they entertain no thoughts of marriage.
They fritter away their own affections, and pride themselves on their
conquests over the female heart; triumphing in having so nicely fooled
them. They pursue this sinful course so far as to drive their pitiable
victims, one after another, from respectable society, who, becoming
disgraced, retaliate by heaping upon them all the indignities and
impositions which the fertile imagination of woman can invent or execute.
4. COURTING WITHOUT INTENDING TO MARRY.--Nearly all this wide-spread crime
and suffering connected with public and private licentiousness and
prostitution, has its origin in these unmeaning courtships--this premature
love--this blighting of the affections, and every young man who courts
without intending to marry, is throwing himself or his sweetheart into
_this hell upon earth_. And most of the blame rests on young men, because
they take the liberty of paying their addresses to the ladies and
discontinuing them, at pleasure, and thereby mainly cause this vice.
5. SETTING THEIR CAPS.--True, young ladies sometimes "set their caps,"
sometimes court very hard by their bewitching smiles and affectionate
manners; by the natural language of love, or that backward reclining and
affectionate roll of the head which expresses it; by their soft and
persuasive accents; by their low dresses, artificial forms, and many other
unnatural and affected ways and means of attracting attention and exciting
love; but women never court till they have been in love and experienced its
interruption, till their first and most tender fibres of love have been
frostbitten by disappointment. It is surely a sad condition of society.
[Illustration: "HASTY FAMILIARITY IS FRAUGHT WITH MANY DANGERS."]
6. TRAMPLING THE AFFECTIONS OF WOMEN.--But man is a self-privileged
character. He may not only violate the laws of his own social nature with
impunity, but he may even trample upon the affections of woman. He may even
carry {151} this sinful indulgence to almost any length, and yet be
caressed and smiled tenderly upon by woman; aye, even by virtuous woman. He
may call out, only to blast the glowing affections of one young lady after
another, and yet his addresses be cordially welcomed by others. Surely a
gentleman is at perfect liberty to pay his addresses, not only to a lady,
but even to the ladies, although he does not once entertain the thought of
marrying his sweet-heart, or, rather his victim. O, man, how depraved! O,
woman, how strangely blind to your own rights and interests!
7. AN INFALLIBLE SIGN.--An infallible sign that a young man's intentions
are improper, is his trying to excite your passions. If he loves you, he
will never appeal to that feeling, because he respects you too much for
that. And the woman who allows a man to take advantage of her just to
compel him to marry her, is lost and heartless in the last degree, and
utterly destitute of moral principle as well as virtue. A woman's riches is
her virtue, that gone she has lost all.
8. THE BEGINNING OF LICENTIOUSNESS.--Man it seldom drives from society. Do
what he may, woman, aye, virtuous and even pious woman rarely excludes him
from her list of visitors. But where is the point of propriety?--immoral
transgression should exclude either sex from respectable society. Is it
that one false step which now constitutes the boundary between virtue and
vice? Or rather, the discovery of that false step? Certainly not! but it is
all that leads to, and precedes and induces it. It is this courting without
marrying. This is the beginning of licentiousness, as well as its main,
procuring cause, and therefore infinitely worse than its consummation
merely.
9. SEARING THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS.--He has seared his social affections so
deeply, so thoroughly, so effectually, that when, at last, he wishes to
marry, he is incapable of loving. He marries, but is necessarily
cold-hearted towards his wife, which of course renders her wretched, if not
jealous, and reverses the faculties of both towards each other; making both
most miserable for life. This induces contention and mutual recrimination,
if not unfaithfulness, and imbitters the marriage relations through life;
and well it may.
10. UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.--This very cause, besides inducing most of that
unblushing public and private prostitution already alluded to, renders a
large proportion of the marriages of the present day unhappy. Good people
mourn over the result, but do not once dream of its cause. They even pray
for moral reform, yet do the very things that increase the evil. {152}
[Illustration: AFTER THE ENGAGEMENT.]
11. WEEPING OVER HER FALLEN SON.--Do you see yonder godly mother, weeping
over her fallen son, and remonstrating with him in tones of a mother's
tenderness and importunity? That very mother prevented that very son
marrying the girl he dearly loved, because she was poor, and this
interruption of his love was the direct and procuring cause of his ruin;
for, if she had allowed him to marry this beloved one, he never would have
thought of giving his "strength unto strange women." True, the mother
ruined her son ignorantly, but none the less effectually.
12. SEDUCTION AND RUIN.--That son next courts another virtuous fair one,
engages her affections, and ruins her, or else leaves her broken-hearted,
so that she is the more easily ruined by others, and thus prepares the way
for her becoming an inmate of a house "whose steps take hold on hell." His
heart is now indifferent, he is ready for anything.
13. THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.--I say then, with emphasis, that no man should
ever pay his addresses to any woman, until he has made his selection, not
even to aid him in making that choice. He should first make his selection
intellectually, and love afterward. He should go about the matter coolly
and with judgment, just as he would undertake any other important matter.
No man or woman, when blinded by love, is in a fit state to judge
advantageously as to what he or she requires, or who is adapted to his or
her wants.
14. CHOOSING FIRST AND LOVING AFTERWARDS.--I know, indeed, that this
doctrine of choosing first and loving afterward, of excluding love from the
councils, and of choosing by and with the consent of the intellect and
moral sentiments, is entirely at variance with the feelings of the young
and the customs of society; but, for its correctness, I appeal to the
common-sense--not to the experience, for so few try this plan. Is not this
the only proper method, and the one most likely to result happily? Try it.
15. THE YOUNG WOMAN'S CAUTION.--And, especially, let no young lady ever
once think of bestowing her affections till she is certain they will not be
broken off--that is, until the match is fully agreed upon; but rather let
her keep her heart whole till she bestows it for life. This requisition is
as much more important, and its violation as much more disastrous to woman
than to man, as her social faculties are stronger than his.
16. A BURNT CHILD DREADS THE FIRE.--As a "burnt child dreads the fire," and
the more it is burnt, the greater the dread: so your affections, once
interrupted, will recoil from a second love, and distrust all mankind. No!
you cannot be too choice of your love--that pivot on which turn your
destinies for life and future happiness.
* * * * *
{154}
Love-Spats.
For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did ran smooth."--SHAKESPEARE.
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."--CONGREVE.
"Thunderstorms clear the atmosphere and promote vegetation; then why
not Love-spats promote love, as they certainly often do?
They are almost universal, and in the nature of our differences cannot
be helped. The more two love, the more they are aggrieved by each
other's faults; of which these spats are but the correction.
Love-spats instead of being universal, they are consequent on imperfect
love, and only aggravate, never correct errors. Sexual storms never
improve, whereas love obviates faults by praising the opposite virtues.
Every view of them, practical and philosophical, condemns them as being
to love what poison is to health, both before and after marriage. They
are nothing but married discords. Every law of mind and love condemns
them. Shun them as you would deadly vipers, and prevent them by
forestallment."--O. S. Fowler.
* * * * *
1. THE TRUE FACTS.--Notwithstanding some of the above quotations, to the
contrary, trouble and disagreement between lovers embitters both love and
life. Contention is always dangerous, and will beget alienation if not
final separation.
2. CONFIRMED AFFECTIONS.--Where affections are once thoroughly confirmed,
each one should be very careful in taking offense, and avoid all
disagreements as far as possible, but if disagreements continually develop
with more or less friction and irritation, it is better for the crisis to
come and a final separation take place. For peace is better than disunited
love.
[Illustration: CUPID'S REBELLION]
3. HATE-SPATS.--Hate-spats, though experienced by most lovers, yet, few
realize how fatal they are to subsequent affections. Love-spats develop
into hate-spats, and their effects upon the affections are blighting and
should not under any circumstances be tolerated. Either agree, or agree to
disagree. If there cannot be harmony before the ties of marriage are
assumed, then there cannot be harmony {156} after. Married life will be
continually marred by a series of "hate-spats" that sooner or later will
destroy all happiness, unless the couple are reasonably well mated.
4. MORE FATAL THE OFTENER THEY OCCUR.--As O. S. Fowler says: "'The poison
of asps is under their lips.' The first spat is like a deep gash cut into a
beautiful face, rendering it ghastly, and leaving a fearful scar, which
neither time nor cosmetics can ever efface; including that pain so fatal to
love, and blotting that sacred love-page with memory's most hideous and
imperishable visages. Cannot many now unhappy remember them as the
beginning of that alienation which embittered your subsequent affectional
cup, and spoiled your lives? With what inherent repulsion do you look back
upon them? Their memory is horrid, and effect on love most destructive."
5. FATAL CONDITIONS.--What are all lovers' "spats" but disappointment in
its very worst form? They necessarily and always produce all its terrible
consequences. The finer feelings and sensibilities will soon become
destroyed and nothing but hatred will remain.
6. EXTREME SORROW.--After a serious "spat" there generally follows a period
of tender sorrow, and a feeling of humiliation and submission. Mutual
promises are consequently made that such a condition of things shall never
happen again, etc. But be sure and remember, that every subsequent
difficulty will require stronger efforts to repair the breach. Let it be
understood that these compromises are dangerous, and every new difficulty
increases their fatality. Even the strongest will endure but few, nor
survive many.
7. DISTRUST AND WANT OF CONFIDENCE.--Most difficulties arise from distrust
or lack of confidence or common-sense. When two lovers eye each other like
two curs, each watching, lest the other should gain some new advantage,
then this shows a lack of common-sense, and the young couple should get
sensible or separate.
8. JEALOUSY.--When one of the lovers, once so tender, now all at once so
cold and hardened; once so coy and familiar, now suddenly so reserved,
distant, hard and austere, is always a sure case of jealousy. A jealous
person is first talkative, very affectionate, and then all at once changes
and becomes cold, reserved and repulsive, apparently without cause. If a
person is jealous before marriage, this characteristic will be increased
rather than diminished by marriage. {157}
9. CONFESSION.--If you make up by confession, the confessor feels mean and
disgraced; or if both confess and forgive, both feel humbled; since
forgiveness implies inferiority and pity; from which whatever is manly and
womanly shrinks. Still even this is better than continued "spats."
10. PREVENTION.--If you can get along well in your courtship you will
invariably make a happy couple if you should unite your destinies in
marriage. Learn not to give nor take offence. You must remember that all
humanity is imperfect at best. We all have our faults, and must keep them
in subordination. Those who truly love each other will have but few
difficulties in their courtship or in married life.
11. REMEDIES.--Establishing a perfect love in the beginning constitutes a
preventive. Fear that they are not truly loved usually paves the way for
"spats." Let all who make any pretension guard against all beginnings of
this reversal, and strangle these "hate-spats" the moment they arise. "Let
not the sun go down upon thy wrath," not even an hour, but let the next
sentence after they begin quench them forever. And let those who cannot
court without "spats," stop; for those who spat before marriage, must
quarrel after.
[Illustration: "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath."]
[Illustration]
* * * * *
{159}
A Broken Heart.
[Illustration: A BROKEN HEART]
1. WOUNDED LOVE.--Tis true that love wields a magic, sovereign, absolute,
and tyrannical power over both the body and the mind when it is given
control. It often, in case of disappointment, works havoc and deals death
blows to its victims, and leaves many in that morbid mental condition which
no life-tonics simply can restore. Wounded love may be the result of hasty
and indiscreet conduct of young people; or the outgrowth of lust, or the
result of domestic infidelity and discord.
2. FATAL EFFECTS.--Our cemeteries receive within the cold shadows of the
grave thousands and thousands of victims that annually die from the results
of "broken hearts." It is no doubt a fact that love troubles cause more
disorders of the heart than everything else combined.
3. DISRUPTED LOVE.--It has long been known that dogs, birds, and even
horses, when separated from their companions or friends, have pined away
and died; so it is not strange that man with his higher intuitive ideas of
affection should suffer from love when suddenly disrupted.
4. CRUCIFYING LOVE.--Painful love feelings strike right to the heart, and
the breaking up of love that cannot be consummated in marriage is sometimes
allowed to crucify the affections. There is no doubt that the suffering
from disappointed love is often deeper and more intense than meeting death
itself.
5. HEALING.--The paralyzing and agonizing consequences of ruptured love can
only be remedied by diversion and society. Bring the mind into a state of
patriotic independence with a full determination to blot out the past.
Those who cannot bring into subordination the pangs of disappointment in
love are not strong characters, and invariably will suffer disappointments
in almost every department of life. Disappointment in love means rising
above it, and conquering it, or demoralization, mental, physical and
sexual.
6. LOVE RUNS MAD.--Love comes unbidden. A blind ungovernable impulse seems
to hold sway in the passions of the affections. Love is blind and seems to
completely subdue and conquer. It often comes like a clap of thunder from a
clear sky, and when it falls it falls flat, leaving only the ruins of a
tornado behind.
7. BAD, DISMAL, AND BLUE FEELINGS.--Despondency breathes disease, and those
who yield to it can neither work, eat nor sleep; they only suffer. The
spell-bound, fascinated, magnetized affections seem to deaden self-control
and no {160} doubt many suffering from love-sickness are totally helpless;
they are beside themselves, irritational and wild. Men and women of genius,
influence and education, all seem to suffer alike, but they do not yield
alike to the subduing influence; some pine away and die; others rise above
it, and are the stronger and better for having been afflicted.
8. RISE ABOVE IT.--Cheer up! If you cannot think pleasurably over your
misfortune, forget it. You must do this or perish. Your power and influence
is too much to blight by foolish and melancholicy pining. Your own sense,
your self-respect, your self-love, your love for others, command you not to
spoil yourself by crying over "spilt milk."
[Illustration: MARRIAGE ON A DEATHBED.]
9. RETRIEVE YOUR PAST LOSS.--Do sun, moon, and stars indeed rise and set in
your loved one? Are there not "as good fish in the sea as ever were
caught?" and can you not catch them? Are there not other hearts on earth
just as loving and lovely, and in every way as congenial? If circumstances
had first turned you upon another, you would have felt about that one as
now about this. Love depends far less on the party loved than on the loving
one. Or is this the way either to retrieve your past loss, or provide for
the future? Is it not both unwise and self-destructive; and in every way
calculated to render your case, present and prospective, still more
hopeless?
10. FIND SOMETHING TO DO.--Idle hands are Satan's workshop. Employ your
mind; find something to do; something in which you can find
self-improvement; something that will fit you better to be admired by
someone else, read, and improve your mind; get into society, throw your
whole soul into some new enterprise, and you will conquer with glory and
come out of the fire purified and made more worthy.
11. LOVE AGAIN.--As love was the cause of your suffering, so love again
will restore you, and you will love better and more consistently. Do not
allow yourself to become soured and detest and shun association. Rebuild
your dilapidated sexuality by cultivating a general appreciation of the
excellence, especially of the mental and moral qualities of the opposite
sex. Conquer your prejudices, and vow not to allow anyone to annoy or
disturb your calmness.
12. LOVE FOR THE DEAD.--A most affectionate woman, who continues to love
her affianced though long dead, instead of becoming soured or deadened,
manifests all the richness and sweetness of the fully-developed woman
thoroughly in love, along with a softened, mellow, twilight sadness which
touches every heart, yet throws a peculiar lustre and beauty over her
manners and entire character. She must mourn, {161} but not forever. It is
not her duty to herself or to her Creator.
13. A SURE REMEDY.--Come in contact with the other sex. You are infused
with your lover's magnetism, which must remain till displaced by another's.
Go to parties and picnics; be free, familiar, offhand, even forward; try
your knack at fascinating another, and yield to fascinations yourself. But
be honest, command respect, and make yourself attractive and worthy.
* * * * *
{162}
Former Customs and Peculiarities Among Men.
1. POLYGAMY.--There is a wide difference as regards the relations of the
sexes in different parts of the world. In some parts polygamy has prevailed
from time immemorial.
Most savage people are polygamists, and the Turks, though slowly departing
from the practice, still allow themselves a plurality of wives.
2. RULE REVERSED.--In Thibet the rule is reversed, and the females are
provided with two or more husbands. It is said that in many instances a
whole family of brothers have but one wife. The custom has at least one
advantageous feature, viz.: the possibility of leaving an unprotected widow
and a number of fatherless children is entirely obviated.
3. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE is a modification of polygamy. It sometimes
occurs among the royalty of Europe, and is regarded as perfectly
legitimate, but the morganatic wife is of lower rank than her royal
husband, and her children do not inherit his rank or fortune. The Queen
only is the consort of the sovereign, and entitled to share his rank.
4. DIFFERENT MANNERS OF OBTAINING WIVES.--Among the uncivilized almost any
envied possession is taken by brute force or superior strength. The same is
true in obtaining a wife. The strong take precedence of the weak. It is
said that among the North American Indians it was the custom for men to
wrestle for the choice of women. A weak man could seldom retain a wife that
a strong man coveted.
The law of contest was not confined to individuals alone. Women were
frequently the cause of whole tribes arraying themselves against each other
in battle. The effort to excel in physical power was a great incentive to
bodily development, and since the best of the men were preferred by the
most superior women, the custom was a good one in this, that the race was
improved.
5. THE ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN employed low cunning and heartless cruelty in
obtaining his wife. Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for
the coveted woman, {163} and, unawares, spring upon her. If simply disabled
he carried her off as his possession, but if the blow had been hard enough
to kill, he abandoned her to watch for another victim. There is here no
effort to attract or please, no contest of strength; his courtship, if
courtship it can be called, would compare very unfavorably with any among
the brute creation.
6. THE KALMUCK TARTAR races for his bride on horseback, she having a
certain start previously agreed upon. The _nuptial knot_ consists in
catching her, but we are told that the result of the race all depends upon
whether the girl wants to be caught or not.
7. SANDWICH ISLANDERS.--Marriage among the early natives of these islands
was merely a matter of mutual inclination. There was no ceremony at all,
the men and women united and separated as they felt disposed.
8. THE FEUDAL LORD, in various parts of Europe, when any of his dependents
or followers married, exercised the right of assuming the bridegroom's
proper place in the marriage couch for the first night. Seldom was there
any escape from this abominable practice. Sometimes the husband, if
wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty sovereign from exercising his
privilege.
9. THE SPARTANS had the custom of encouraging intercourse between their
best men and women for the sake of a superior progeny, without any
reference to a marriage ceremony. Records show that the ancient Roman
husband has been known to invite a friend, in whom he may have admired some
physical or mental trait, to share the favors of his wife, that the
peculiar qualities that he admired might be repeated in the offspring.
[Illustration]
{164}
[Illustration: The Peasant Father Blessing His Daughter at Her Engagement.]
* * * * *
{165}
[Illustration]