1. FIRST LOVE.--This is the most important direction of all. The first love
experiences a tenderness, a purity and unreservedness, an exquisiteness, a
devotedness, and a poetry belonging to no subsequent attachment. "Love,
like life, has no second spring." Though a second attachment may be
accompanied by high moral feeling, and to a devotedness to the object
loved; yet, let love be checked or blighted in its first pure emotion, and
the beauty of its spring is irrecoverably withered and lost. This does not
mean the simple love of children in the first attachment they call love,
but rather the mature intelligent love of those of suitable age.
[Illustration: CONSIDERING THE QUESTION.]
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2. FREE FROM TEMPTATIONS.--As long as his heart is bound up in its first
bundle of love and devotedness--as long as his affections remain
reciprocated and uninterrupted--so long temptations cannot take effect. His
heart is callous to the charms of others, and the very idea of bestowing
his affections upon another is abhorrent. Much more so is animal
indulgence, which is morally impossible.
3. SECOND LOVE NOT CONSTANT.--But let this first love be broken off, and
the flood-gates of passion are raised. Temptations now flow in upon him. He
casts a lustful eye upon every passing female, and indulges unchaste
imaginations and feelings. Although his conscientiousness or intellect may
prevent actual indulgence, yet temptations now take effect, and render him
liable to err; whereas before they had no power to awaken improper thoughts
or feelings. Thus many young men find their ruin.
4. LEGAL MARRIAGE.--What would any woman give for merely a nominal or legal
husband, just to live with and provide for her, but who entertained not one
spark of love for her, or whose affections were bestowed upon another? How
absurd, how preposterous the doctrine that the obligations of marriage
derive their sacredness from legal enactments and injunctions! How it
literally profanes this holy of holies, and drags down this heaven-born
institution from its original, divine elevation, to the level of a merely
human device. Who will dare to advocate the human institution of marriage
without the warm heart of a devoted and loving companion!
5. LEGISLATION.--But no human legislation can so guard this institution but
that it may be broken in spirit, though, perhaps, acceded to in form; for,
it is the heart which this institution requires. There must be true and
devoted affection, or marriage is a farce and a failure.
6. THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY AND THE LAW GOVERNING MARRIAGE are for the
protection of the individual, yet a man and woman may be married by law and
yet unmarried in spirit. The law may tie together, and no marriage be
consummated. Marriage therefore is Divine, and "whom God hath joined
together let no man put asunder." A right marriage means a right state of
the heart. A careful study of this work will be a great help to both the
unmarried and the married.
7. DESERTION AND DIVORCE.--For a young man to court a young woman, and
excite her love till her affections are riveted, and then (from sinister
motives, such as, to marry one richer, or more handsome), to leave her, and
try {188} elsewhere, is the very same crime as to divorce her from all that
she holds dear on earth--to root up and pull out her imbedded affections,
and to tear her from her rightful husband. First love is always constant.
The second love brings uncertainty--too often desertions before marriage
and divorces after marriage.
8. THE COQUET.--The young woman to play the coquet, and sport with the
sincere affections of an honest and devoted young man, is one of the
highest crimes that human nature can commit. Better murder him in body too,
as she does in soul and morals, and it is the result of previous
disappointment, never the outcome of a sincere first love.
9. ONE MARRIAGE. One evidence that second marriages are contrary to the
laws of our social nature, is the fact that almost all step-parents and
step-children disagree. Now, what law has been broken, to induce this
penalty? The law of marriage; and this is one of the ways in which the
breach punishes itself. It is much more in accordance with our natural
feelings, especially those of mothers, that children should be brought up
by their own parent.
10. SECOND MARRIAGE.--Another proof of this point is, that second marriage
is more a matter of business. "I'll give you a home, if you'll take care of
my children." "It's a bargain," is the way most second matches are made.
There is little of the poetry of first-love, and little of the coyness and
shrinking diffidence which characterize the first attachment. Still these
remarks apply almost equally to a second attachment, as to second marriage.
11. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.--Let this portion be read and
pondered, and also the one entitled, "Marry your First Love if possible,"
which assigns the cause, and points out the only remedy, of licentiousness.
As long as the main cause of this vice exists, and is aggravated by
purse-proud, high-born, aristocratic parents and friends, and even by the
virtuous and religious, just so long, and exactly in the same ratio will
this blighting Sirocco blast the fairest flowers of female innocence and
lovliness, and blight our noblest specimens of manliness. No sin of our
land is greater.
[Illustration]
{189} [Illustration: CUPID'S CHARM.]
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{190}
Flirting and Its Dangers.
[Illustration: HOW MANY YOUNG GIRLS ARE RUINED.]
1. NO EXCUSE.--In this country there is no excuse for the young man who
seeks the society of the loose and the dissolute. There is at all times and
everywhere open to him a society of persons of the opposite sex of his own
age and of pure thoughts and lives, whose conversation will refine him and
drive from his bosom ignoble and impure thoughts.
2. THE DANGERS.--The young man who may take pleasure in the fact that he is
the hero of half a dozen or more {191} engagements and love episodes,
little realizes that such constant excitement often causes not only
dangerously frequent and long-continued nocturnal emissions, but most
painful affections of the testicles. Those who show too great familiarity
with the other sex, who entertain lascivious thoughts, continually exciting
the sexual desires, always suffer a weakening of power and sometimes the
actual diseases of degeneration, chronic inflammation of the gland,
spermatorrhoea, impotence, and the like.--Young man, beware; your
punishment for trifling with the affections of others may cost you a life
of affliction.
3. REMEDY.--Do not violate the social laws. Do not trifle with the
affections of your nature. Do not give others countless anguish, and also
do not run the chances of injuring yourself and others for life. The
society of refined and pure women is one of the strongest safeguards a
young man can have, and he who seeks it will not only find satisfaction,
but happiness. Simple friendship and kind affections for each other will
ennoble and benefit.
4. THE TIME FOR MARRIAGE.--When a young man's means permit him to marry, he
should then look intelligently for her with whom he expects to pass the
remainder of his life in perfect loyalty, and in sincerity and singleness
of heart. Seek her to whom he is ready to swear to be ever true.
5. BREACH OF CONFIDENCE.--Nothing is more certain, says Dr. Naphey, to
undermine domestic felicity, and sap the foundation of marital happiness,
than marital infidelity. The risks of disease which a married man runs in
impure intercourse are far more serious, because they not only involve
himself, but his wife and his children. He should know that there is
nothing which a woman will not forgive sooner than such a breach of
confidence. He is exposed to the plots and is pretty certain sooner or
later to fall into the snares of those atrocious parties who subsist on
blackmail. And should he escape these complications, he still must lose
self-respect, and carry about with him the burden of a guilty conscience
and a broken vow.
6. SOCIETY RULES AND CUSTOMS.--A young man can enjoy the society of ladies
without being a "flirt." He can escort ladies to parties, public places of
interest, social gatherings, etc., without showing special devotion to any
one special young lady. When he finds the choice of his heart, then he will
be justified to manifest it, and publicly proclaim it by paying her the
compliment, exclusive attention. To keep a lady's company six months is a
public announcement of an engagement.
* * * * *
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A Word to Maidens.
1. NO YOUNG LADY who is not willing to assume the responsibility of a true
wife, and be crowned with the sacred diadem of motherhood, should ever
think of getting married. We have too many young ladies to-day who despise
maternity, who openly vow that they will never be burdened with children,
and yet enter matrimony at the first opportunity. What is the result? Let
echo answer, What? Unless a young lady believes that motherhood is noble,
is honorable, is divine, and she is willing to carry out that sacred
function of her nature, she had a thousand times better refuse every
proposal, and enter some honorable occupation and wisely die an old maid by
choice.
2. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOUNG LADY, never enter into the physical relations
of marriage with a man until you have conversed with him freely and fully
on these relations. Learn distinctly his views and feelings and
expectations in regard to that purest and most ennobling of all the
functions of your nature, and the most sacred of all intimacies of conjugal
love. Your self-respect, your beauty, your glory, your heaven, as a wife,
will be more directly involved in his feelings and views and practices, in
regard to that relation, than in all other things. As you would not become
a weak, miserable, imbecile, unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the
very prime of your life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen
one, ere you commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of
home. Beware of that man who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and
propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the
hallowed function of maternity.
3. TALK WITH YOUR INTENDED frankly and openly. Remember, concealment and
mystery in him, towards you, on all other subjects pertaining to conjugal
union might be overlooked, but if he conceals his views here, rest assured
it bodes no good to your purity and happiness as a wife and mother. You can
have no more certain assurance that you are to be victimized, your soul and
body offered up, _slain_, on the altar of his sensualism, than his
unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so vital to your happiness.
Unless he is willing to hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your
nature and to your conditions, and consecrate its passions and its powers
to the elevation and happiness of his wife and children, your maiden soul
had better return to God unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal
love than that you should become the wife of such a man and the mother of
his children. {193}
[Illustration: ROMAN LOVE MAKING.]
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