DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure 'Room 
 
CASOA LLAKNA: 
 
 (GOOD NEWS.) 
 
 LOVE, WOMAN, MARRIAGE: 
 
 THE GRAND SECEET ! 
 
 A BOOK FOR THE HEARTFUL. 
 
 " But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds : And, therefore, in hooks 
 — which are his thoughts — the author's character lies hare to the discerning eye." 
 
 — BCLWIB. 
 
 FOURTH EDITIOK. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 1872. 
 
ST 
 
 MY DEAD MOTHEE, — God bless her! — whom I never knew — for 
 when she died I was but a babe — but to whom I am indebted for the 
 Courage, Love, and Manhood in me ! — courage to breast the fiercest storm 
 and to strike for the Eight ! — love to God and all human kind, and 
 manhood to do and say the right and true thing, no matter who or what 
 assailed me : and to all other women the wide world over, who believe 
 that Virtue is not a sham, nor God a delusion — to all who believe 
 Marriage to be a Sacred Institution, founded by the Creator for Human 
 Good ; and to all who are opposed to whatever antagonizes the True, 
 the Beautiful, and the Good, 
 
 THIS WORK 
 
 te dedicated by 
 
 (Khiscx Elitttnz. 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
 
 RANDOLPH PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 

 PREFACE A. 
 
 Young Mr. Gumbs undertook to start a paper out in Cambria county a 
 short time ago. He called it the Cambria Milky Way. He said, in his 
 prospectus, that he intended to make the Milky Way lively, spicy, vigor- 
 ous, fearless, and entertaining ; and he did. In the first number he called 
 the editor of the rival paper "a diabolical liar, an unmitigated scoundrel, 
 and a remorseless assassin." He alluded to the Mayor, in a cheerful para- 
 graph, as " a corrupt magistrate, whose torments from the remorse which 
 festered in his soul were only surpassed by the physical agony which is 
 always the punishment of the depraved and riotous debauchee." He 
 soothed the feelings of the postmaster with the remark that "the pecula- 
 tions of this official Dick Turpin can be compared to nothing but the ter- 
 rific robberies committed in the past by those dastardly Spanish bucca- 
 neers, whom he so closely resembles in general character." He announced, 
 under the head of " Social Gossip," that a certain young man had been 
 rejected the evening before by the lady of his love, and volunteered the 
 information that it was " the wisest thing she could have done under the 
 peculiar circumstances ; " and he related how, upon the preceding day, he 
 heard another youth, named Alexander Jones, remark to a friend that, 
 "if anything will make a man feel juicy about the heart, it is to talk vel- 
 vet to a pair of sky-colored eyes, by moonlight, in a clover field." The 
 next edition of the paper was not issued at the regular time. Finally 
 some copies were sent out over the town in balloons, and they contained 
 these editorial remarks : " The editor has found it impossible to go out 
 to-day to hunt for news items, because the Mayor, and the editor of the 
 Times, and the postmaster, and Alexander Jones, and a number of other 
 individuals, whose names we have not been able to learn, have been sitting 
 
IV PREFACE A. 
 
 on the curbstone and roosting round on the back fence all the morning 
 with shot-guns and other murderous weapons, and looking as if they were 
 in earnest. We give notice here that we have moved the fire-proof safe 
 against the door of our sanctum, and have lined the front stairs with 
 spring-guns, cross-eyed Irishmen, and insane bull-terriers, who have not 
 been fed for a week. The privileges of a free press shall not be interfered 
 with while we wield a pen or possess a bull-dog." The Milky Way, how- 
 ever, died next day, Mr. Gumbs having slid down the water-spout and 
 taken the early train for Kansas. 
 
 And so, too, not every one knows how to edit a family, and come out of 
 the trial right side up with care. Often they, after repeated experiments, 
 come off even worse than did Mr. Gumbs. Well, here is a book contain- 
 ing THE GRAND SECRET, and he or she who reads it understanding^, 
 will find the Road to Happiness ; be able to detect the counterfeit, appre- 
 ciate the true and real, and say with those who have read it, " This is the 
 Greatest and Best Book on Human Love, that ever fell from mortal 
 pen." 
 
 Glorious John Brougham, in his play, "The Dark Hour Before Dawn," 
 hits the truth exactly, when he, in speaking of Women as not being 
 queens, precisely, says : " They are, as they always were, and always will 
 be, secret agents, advisers and instigators, darling creatures and affec- 
 tionate institutions generally, but in and through all, fhe absolute and 
 irresistible movers of circumstances, the unseen influences that work the 
 world's machinery, while the befooled, self-satisfied lesser half flatters 
 himself that it's all his doing. " And John Brougham was right .' And also 
 when he says : "It is sad that one should forget even in thought or for a 
 single instant, that the unerring hand holds the balance, and howsoever 
 the world's tempest may assault the truthful heart, it must iu time out- 
 ride the 6torm." 
 
 Harriet . 
 
PREFACE B. 
 
 Sad, sad, are they who know not love, 
 
 But, far from passion's tears and smiles, 
 Drift down a moonless sea, and pass 
 
 The silvery coasts of faery isles. 
 
 But sadder they, whose longing lips 
 
 Kiss empty air, and never touch 
 The dear warm mouth of those they love, — 
 
 Waiting, wasting, suffering much. 
 
 But clear as amber, sweet as musk, 
 
 Is life to those whose lives unite ! 
 They bask in Allah's smile by day, 
 
 And nestle in His heart by night. 
 
 — The Song of Fatima. 
 
 Thus sang she. Thus singeth every true soul. And to tell the world 
 where to find the music, and how to pitch the eternal tune, is the object of 
 this book from the soul and pen of — 
 
 Casca Llanna. 
 
PREFACE C. 
 
 THE HEART SONG. 
 
 Words and M usic by " CASCA LLANNA." Arranged for piano-forte. 
 
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 light so pear - ly. Love me in the morn - ing early, 
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 2d Interlude. 
 
 2 Love me when the sun is flashing 
 
 Rippling seas of love and light ; 
 Love me when his beams are dashing 
 
 Death to darkness and to night ; 
 Love me gently, truly, sweetly; 
 Love me nobly, and completely. 
 
 3 Love me in the eventide, 
 
 "When God's starry eyes look down ; 
 Or tempests on the air shall ride, 
 
 And threat'ning storms in anger frown ; 
 Then draw me gently to thy breast, 
 And soothe my timid soul to rest. 
 
 4 Love me when my cheek is fading, 
 
 And my sparkling eyes grow dim ; 
 And flecks of gray my hair are shading, — 
 
 My form no longer lithe and trun ; 
 Love me when no longer young, — 
 End the race as you began. 
 
CASCA LLANNA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "The Time, the Place — ah, woe is me 
 That change like this on earth should be ! " 
 
 Vive L' amour! And flourish true, and perish false, affec- 
 tion ! The theme is Love ! The grand master of us all ; the 
 tyrant who rules us with a strong hand, yet the slavery to 
 whom, is the most delicious bondage ever known. 
 
 Love is not the gay and festive thing a great many are apt, 
 too hastily, to imagine ; for of all things else whatever, in 
 human experience, it is the most serious and solemn. 
 
 Three general aims in life are before us all, and for the 
 gaining of which all strive alike, with might, main and patience. 
 These are "Wealth, Power, Love. To safely secure the first is 
 often to defeat the grand end and aim of life, — Happiness. 
 To achieve the second is often to be bound, chained, im- 
 prisoned, limited, become dissatisfied ; to gain them both is to 
 quench a thirst, with thirst-producing waters ! To achieve the 
 third is bliss indeed. To fail is death, incompleteness, per- 
 petual unrest. 
 
 It is only when some great calamity and agony has whelmed 
 us ; after some mighty grief has befallen us ; after some terrible 
 tempest of the heart has swept relentlessly over us, that we 
 become capable of receiving great truths from Beyond, and of 
 bearing a lofty message to mankind ! 
 
 It is only when our own souls are, or have been, racked with 
 tortures and sufferings, ourselves can only know, that we 
 become capable of justly appreciating the wretchedness of 
 
10 WOMAN, LOVE* AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 others ; comprehending the real meaning of the word Sympa- 
 thy, and of exercising charity and compassion. And so, now, 
 the writer of this gives the light and truth from out of the 
 depths, to those who need it — the teeming thousands of the 
 lands, — men and women, everywhere, and of all races, ages, 
 languages, and climes, because, in heart-matters, all are on an 
 equal footing, and all alike, from the hutless miner to the 
 crowned king, are subjects of, and sadly listen to, the story 
 of love. To open an hitherto unexplored field of this, the 
 master passion, and make all wiser who read the book, is why 
 the book is written. 
 
 Of course it is not intended herein either to relate a series of 
 love-adventures, special incidents, deluge the reader with 
 medical bosh, or in any way pander to a corrupt taste or morbid 
 appetite. Far from it. The book has an infinitely higher, 
 better, nobler end to achieve. It is proposed to present the 
 crystallized result of a life's experience and observations, — a 
 life which, as all who know the author are aware, has been 
 one of very strange and varied character — in an hundred 
 respects. 
 
 The book is not given as a warning either, but solely as the 
 insight of the onlook. The diamonds of absolute knowledge 
 and truth are there ; and it is believed the work will leave the 
 reader better, truer, nobler, and wiser than it found him or 
 her. 
 
 Probably this is the third attempt ever made, — both the 
 former ones by the same writer, — to follow the Grand Passion 
 into its very crypts, and from out the glimmer, hold the torch 
 to light others on their wearisome way at best ; to pilot them 
 off the shoals into deep water, and smoother seas ; above all, 
 to show the difference between the seeming and the real. 
 
 Love has a tragical, as well as a serio-comic side ; and the 
 victims of the tragedy side far outnumber the laughers on the 
 gay one. 
 
 Tragedy in love? Ay! even when it is true and real, for 
 not a few of us strangely delight in fearfully torturing the very 
 ones we'd die for ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 11 
 
 It need not be said that this work is written in the direct 
 interests of the conservative side of human society, and of the 
 great impending reaction against the false and perilous notions 
 of love, and social life, and polity, which now taint every 
 breath we draw, and which for many, long under the lead of 
 bad women and worse men, have not only corrupted the general 
 morals, but poisoned the public mind and seared its con- 
 science ; for that will appear at every step taken ; but it is 
 essential to state that the book purposes to inaugurate that 
 reaction, and engage in a combat a Voutrance, with the loose 
 philosophers and philosophies, till they are all driven to the 
 wall, and virtue has a hearing, so long denied her. 
 
 What a spectacle is presented in our day, wherein shameless 
 courtesans aspire to the leadership of Women, and pestilent 
 libertines don the mantle of Philosophy, wherein to delude 
 mankind, and in effect make society one huge lazar-house of 
 corruption, desolation, and ruin total and complete ! 
 
 In this age of pseudo-philosophical knight-errantry, wherein 
 every dabster in logic feels justified in running a tilt at all the 
 human virtues, outraging Christian propriety and decency, — 
 attempting to dethrone the very God of heaven from the uni- 
 verse, — a corrective is needed, and with that view the volume 
 is issued in behalf of truth, civilization, healthy philosophy, 
 and sound morals ; for it is no mere literary enterprise on the 
 writer's part. From the deeps of his soul this book is born. 
 The inspiring motive will presently appear. 
 
 Not all that could have been given to the world on the sub- 
 ject of the current book has been given in other works allied 
 thereto from the same pen, already afloat on the sea of litera- 
 ture in this and other lands, mainly because intense suffering, 
 since experienced, had not then developed the clearness of 
 perception essential, nor the courage to boldly throw down 
 the gauntlet to the entire herd of so-called " philosophers" and 
 pseudo-reformers, and to carry the war straight home to the 
 enemy's camp. These essentials now exist, and a change has 
 been wrought in the author's mind respecting many points of 
 
12 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the general topic, and what was not previously said will now 
 have free scope without fear or favor. 
 
 There are two sphinxes in the world ; one of them the author 
 has gazed at for long hours, vainly trying to read the stupen- 
 dous mystery of its calm and ultra-human countenance, as it so 
 strangely, quietly, sits there in such awful and solemn state 
 upon the plateau of old stone-founded Ghizeh, hard by the 
 great Pyramid of Egypt, almost within ear-shot of the stilly, 
 quietly gliding waters of old Nile, as he majestically, in lordly 
 mood, sweeps on in his passage to the sea, from Dongola and 
 the far-off Negro land ; over the rocks of Elephanta, by the 
 grave of Him who sleeps in Philse, past old Dendera, Aznak, 
 Karnac, Thebes, and Luxor ; rolling like sheeted silver past the 
 site of ruined Memphis ; laughing gayly as he glides past 
 Rhoda, where the king's daughter found the bulrush basket, 
 wherein slept that wondrous child who afterwards gave laws to 
 Jewiy and wrote his name in iron letters on the pages of the 
 world's great history ; and gliding still, by many a crook and 
 turn, at last finds his passage to the greater waters through a 
 hundred mouths out through the Desert's greenery ; for old 
 Zahara, like the worst and roughest man, has bright and good 
 spots here and there, mute, but powerful proofs that God does 
 smile, even when he seems to wear the sternest frown. 
 
 Comparatively few people in the world have beheld that 
 Sphinx. It is made of stone, modelled after some mighty 
 thought in some mighty mind, in a mighty age ; and has 
 silently sitten there alone, staring at the centuries as, in long 
 lines, they swept by. Still nearly every one can comprehend 
 the nature of the material, if not the weird meaning of the 
 symbol. 
 
 The other and infinitely more marvellous and complex 
 Sphinx is a multi-millioned one, and a riddle so deep that com- 
 pared to which the one of stone on Ghizeh's plain is the merest 
 child's play. This sphinx is found everywhere, seen at all 
 times, places, seasons, ages ; is talked to, with, at, and about, 
 by everybody ; but is understood, comprehended, fathomed, 
 only by the everlasting, omniscient God ! Her name is — 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 13 
 
 Woman ! Whoever can define her can go at once to the head 
 of the class. The quality of mere sex is the least mystery 
 about her ; a mere point in the outspread sky of Femininity. 
 She is a million affirmatives, with a flat denial back of every one 
 of them ; a straightforward fact, with just as straight a contradic- 
 tion, looking at the same time out of the same identical eyes ; 
 vehement fire and Nova Zembla ice dwelling together, and 
 not only coming to the surface alternately, but both at once ; 
 two mountains without a valley between them ; an irresistible 
 force and an immovable body contacting each other in the 
 same person, at one and the same time ; a vast bundle of direct 
 antagonisms dwelling harmoniously together ; the north and 
 south poles striking hands. All she has proved herself to be 
 in any given direction is but the faintest index prophetic® to 
 an exhaustless volume of capabilities, possibilities, ay, and 
 probabilities too, unimagined by others, undreamed of even by 
 herself. 
 
 Heine, the German poet, probably smarting under the lash 
 of one of these sphinxes, has left some rather sharp lines about 
 the sex, yet lines conveying too unwelcome truths. Said he, 
 regarding " A Woman : " — 
 
 " They loved each other beyond belief; 
 The woman a rogue was, the man was a thief; 
 At each piece of knavery, daily 
 She fell on the bed — laughing gayly. 
 
 "In joy and pleasure they passed the day; 
 Upon his bosom all night she lay ; 
 "When they took him to the Old Bailey 
 At the window she stood — laughing gayly. 
 
 " He sent her this message : Oh, come to me, 
 I yearn, my love, so greatly for thee ; 
 I want thee, I pine, and look palely; 
 Her head she but shook — laughing giyly. 
 
 " At six in the morning they hanged the knave ; 
 At seven they laid him down in his grave ; 
 
14 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAIiltlAGE. 
 
 At eight on her ears this news fell stately — 
 And a bumper she took — laughing gayly." 
 
 Prior to the occurrences which inspired the present task, the 
 writer hereof had devoted much attention to the study of the 
 grand complex human enigma, Woman, and believed the solution 
 to have been triumphantly reached, when a circumstance oc- 
 curred, the effect of which was to entirely rid him of that 
 dangerous conceit. 
 
 One day there came into the author's rooms a venal and a vil- 
 lanous negro, whose presence was insufferable by reason of his 
 moral filth, and utter lack of even the primary elements of 
 manhood. To get rid of the fellow, some of the writer's books 
 were given him. These he took to the place where he served 
 as Jack-of-all-work, and boasting of his present, displayed them 
 to a woman — no — but a sphinx, who earned a portion of her 
 bread in the same establishment. The result of her reading 
 was that she visited the author. An acquaintance sprung up, 
 that ripened into a one-sided affection — on his part for her. 
 Another week, and that affection became a terrible and ve- 
 hement fascination. To that woman the reading world, in a 
 great measure, is indebted not only for this book, but for the 
 most prodigious change of view and advancement in the realms 
 and energizing of the Power of Thought, he had eyer known in 
 ten times the period. After all, things are balanced in this 
 world could we only but see it ; and in this case, although that 
 strange woman, that cool, conscienceless, sinister, thin-lipped, 
 blue-eyed, affectional sorceress — not in its vilest sense — 
 brought havoc and hades in her train, yet a glorious power was 
 born of the agony, and but for La Blondette this book had 
 never seen the light ; for she practically taught him more 
 about woman, more of the unfathomable profundities of wo- 
 manine nature of all sorts, in six brief weeks, than had pre- 
 viously been learned in many long years of unremitting study, 
 observations, analogies, and experience, in all lands, with all 
 peoples, and under every variety of circumstances, and favor- 
 
TTO.UAX, LOVE, AXD MAI2MAGE. 15 
 
 able conditions. "Why? Because she shook his soul to its 
 foundations and brought new forces into play. 
 
 There's nothing like love, — or what passes current under 
 that name, and is felt and believed to be such, — to shut one's 
 e}*es most thoroughly and completely, both to one's own short- 
 comings and weaknesses of character, and to those of the object of 
 the sentiment and passion. There's nothing like the sudden loss 
 of it to open them very widely indeed ! and then what a rush 
 of new knowledges flood in upon the soul and brain ! How 
 quickly one finds out the sore spot in the heart, and the soft 
 one in the head, — as did the writer of these lines, who pens 
 them, confessionally, for the loftiest of purposes, and which were 
 not achievable otherwise ; for it is not disgraceful to acknowl- 
 edge having a heart, or that said heart has been warmed with 
 affection or scorched with wild-fire, by a flame from Tartarus. 
 When a man or woman is suddenly flung out upon the night, 
 alone ; whirled like a flash from the orbit and sphere of love ; 
 when one to whom 30U have given your heart, and bound all 
 your hopes upon, turns from and bitterly mocks your most 
 fearful pain and gayfy laughs while your heart is wrung and 
 bleeding, — how quickly 3*011 find out just where that heart is 
 situate ; that one has a soul, and that soul full of keenly sensi- 
 tive nerves. How quickly one develops feeling ; learns what 
 companionship amounts to, and the priceless value of the treas- 
 ured footsteps now gone forever and heard no more ; and of the 
 voice whose beloved accents no longer fall in welcome music 
 upon the listening ear, sharpset and waiting to hear it, but 
 waiting in vain ! Then, ah, then, Ave begin to understand what 
 desolation means ; and how utterly insignificant are wealth and 
 its trappings, fame and its trumpet, power and its sceptre, 
 ambition and its tires ; its sharp, quick throbbing ; its fierce and 
 deep unrest, compared to the single breath of love ! How dis- 
 tasteful are even sympathj* and condolence then, — when the 
 heart is reft and lonel}- ! How utterly meaningless is even the 
 lure of human beauty, or mental power, music, art, philosophy, 
 — everything but religion, when love has left us wrecked and 
 stranded on the shore ; and even religion is hard to think about 
 
16 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 just then ! for we are so constructed that when we are full of 
 a love-loss, there's precious little room for anything else. But 
 then again it is well, right here, to apply a little common sense ; 
 for it so happens that most people so thoroughly embalm a 
 supposed loved one in their own sphere, as to imagine they 
 dearly love that other, when in fact they are merely loving their 
 own reflected selves, and all the love is on one side only. They 
 get moody, stay continually indoors, keep away from society, 
 and grow morbid all the time ; when if they would but stir out 
 and mingle with others, the blues would soon take wing ; they 
 would find out the utter worthlessness of their idol, and discover 
 a great many better fish in the sea than they ever caught out of 
 it ; for a one-sided love don't amount to much at best, and the 
 sooner it is shaken off the better ! Let the fascinator go, for 
 the chances are ten to one that he or she is not worth cultivating 
 or fretting over. All of us are so constituted that we frequently 
 take an almost insane, certainly unreasonable, delight in deceiv- 
 ing ourselves. In the case of one male victim, in spite of a 
 large experience, nothing whatever could remove the impres- 
 sion that he dearly, madly loved and adored a strange woman, 
 nor that she loved him in return, when the fact is that he was 
 under a basilisk, vampire spell, and she was making a few points 
 best known to herself ; and had no more real love for him than 
 a tigress has for a tender lamb, except in the devouring 
 sense. The whole thing was horribly false, yet terribly real. 
 Now others are liable to the self-same or co-tangent experiences, 
 and would gladly learn the loftier and the better side of love. 
 That they may, is why the work is penned ; that hearts bowed 
 down in unhealthy depression, and suffering untold agonies, 
 even tormented be} T ond degree at the bare idea of their idols, 
 being looked at by another, may learn to laugh with palpitating 
 joy at their deliverance from a vampire-thrall, and thereafter, 
 unmoved, behold that self-same idol wrapped in the foul embrace 
 of a tame gorilla, and without enduring even one single pang- 
 ful twinge at the spectacle. 
 
 A false love withers the soul ; a true one builds it up and 
 makes it giant strong. It will turn out on examination that a 
 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 1,7 
 
 great many so-called burning loves, like La Blondetle's, are but 
 unhealthful fevers, smelling more of below than above, sulphur 
 than roses, and charged with bitter instead of sweets. 
 
 There are better birds in the air than ever yet were caught 
 and caged ; and better loving hearts, too, all waiting their chances 
 to play their parts in the grand drama of Home and its joys, in 
 many acts and numerous tableaux. Time dries many tears and 
 opens many graves, yet never fails, when appealed to, to cure 
 all cases of morbid love. 
 
 That would be a vain and hardy traveller who should affirm 
 that he had seen all things worth viewing on the globe ; yet n ot 
 one-tenth so desperate in assertion as he who should declare 
 or even fancy he had even a half idea of all the mysteries locked 
 up within any one of the myriad moving paradoxes flitting 
 around us all the time, some of them scarcely noticed amidst 
 the ceaseless throng. Such a one would be a fit subject for a 
 strait-jacket, because the man does not, and never did, live, 
 who can, or could, fathom one half of the profundities of a 
 woman's nature, or sense one half of the awful amount of power 
 coiled away within the deeps of her being, and she herself is not 
 half aware of what she is capable of. 
 
 One day an old black lady of , a lady both by culture, for 
 
 she had been educated in France, and had half a million of 
 money to back it, said to the Duchess de Broglie : " Madame, 
 why do you not win the Duke to your feet, now, as in the olden 
 time?" — " Ah, ma foil It is impossible ! " — " With your face, 
 yes! but not with your feet!" — "Feet! what?" — "Why, 
 Madame, when you want to win the Duke, wear close-fitting 
 dresses, semi-negligee I white stockings and low-quartered shoes!" 
 The duchess laughed — and tried it on, — for thus attired his wife 
 was the most beautiful woman that breathed the sunny air of 
 France ; — and the " recipe" has never yet failed in any other 
 land. Why? Because it never was, and never will be, in the 
 power of any man to resist the attractions of a woman he once 
 loved, attired thus. There is a wonderful magic about it, whose 
 nature and effects are alike inscrutable. But many a man and 
 
18 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 woman dies and never finds it out — and indeed, never makes 
 an effort to try to. 
 
 Sitting on a chair in the office where this is written is an 
 intimate acquaintance of the author's, — a landscape painter of 
 mighty fame and far mightier power, besides being a very clever 
 poet — as the rooms are in some sense a meeting-ground for a 
 
 few choice souls. Mr. 's spirit is that of old Castilian 
 
 pride itself, whose will but a few months ago was adamantine, 
 and who held up his head like a born king, as he is ; but that 
 self-same head is to-night in sorrow deep bowed down, and to 
 him the great outer life of the world, erewhile so jocund and full 
 of brightness, is black as inky darkness, because a woman — 
 his sport and half mockery last year — has taught him that he 
 really has a heart ; sometimes a bitter lesson ! 
 
 How strangely we are organized ; and how curious it is that, 
 despite all human experience, which ought to have taught us 
 better, we so seldom value health till sickness lays its heavy 
 hand upon us ; religion, till death and sorrow have crossed our 
 thresholds, and reddened our lintels with our own heart's blood ; 
 wealth, till ruin rushes upon us ; or love, till we have blighted 
 it, and brought desolation on our heads ! 
 
 (i We gathered shells, from day to day, 
 And — threw them, like a child, away !" 
 
 And yet that is the same old human story. Is it to be repeated 
 forever and forever? God knows. 
 
 If it be indeed a sublime and divine truth that sex itself is 
 but provisional, — that is, limited to a given arc of the universal 
 polygon of souls' duration ; a provisional phenomena which finds 
 its last estoppel when a given epoch shall have been lived through 
 here on earth, in this partial life, and in that fuller one which 
 follows it after we cross to the other side, as many believe, — 
 then is it easy to comprehend the force and vast meaning of the 
 doctrine first announced by the author of this work, but for 
 certain reasons, -no longer existent, accredited to a certain mys- 
 tical fraternity, but now openly acknowledged, which doctrine 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 19 
 
 he gave in a " First Manifesto." That idea is the true one, and 
 it positively declares and affirms that in the feminine side of the 
 vast universe is the womb of Being ! — is centred the awful 
 and tremendous vortex of power ceaselessly moving that uni- 
 verse from turret to foundation ; and in which is fashioned, and 
 from whence is born, the All that is, because itself is the cen- 
 tralia of Energ} 7 . The startling hypothesis may be true in fact, 
 as to the writer's soul. If life here be but the shadow of that 
 beyond and hereafter, — and as it is clear that all real Power 
 resides in the feminine principle here, while Force, its shadow, 
 emanates from, and is wielded by, the masculine, — then femi- 
 ninity proclaims its vast superiority, and Woman at once, by 
 reason of that principle alone, and aside from all other personal 
 qualities whatever, instantly ceases to be small, but straightway 
 looms up and wears a radiant importance and majesty, super- 
 latively, unspeakably divine and grand. 
 
 Take the world and all things in it, divide them up, and it 
 will be found that those of love, which of course is feminine in 
 its nature, outnumber and outweigh those of mind or mascu- 
 liiiit} 7 , to an extent not easily believable until after the com- 
 parisons are made. Music, art, the vowels, affection, pulchri- 
 tude, light, color, and all derived therefrom, are essentially 
 feminine, because each bears the burden of betterness within its 
 very nature. 
 
 Is it not a common knowledge even, that nearly all men who 
 have of their prowess achieved great names and grand results 
 have invariably brought them forth from the feminine side of 
 their natures? Witness the history of music, art, sculpture, 
 poetry, and the drama. Even great warriors have won their 
 proudest laurels on gory fields of human slaughter, under the 
 mighty impulsion of woman's love ; while it is notorious that no 
 great rctatesman or orator ever lived who was not a devoted 
 lover of woman ; and no speaker ever can reach such sublime 
 and lofty heights of eloquence and impassioned speech, as when 
 he catches the bright glance and approving smile of some fair 
 auditress before him. Then, ah, then ! 
 
20 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 " When by the mighty speaker brought, 
 Truth's sacred triumphs come, 
 Verse ceases to be airy thought, 
 And sculpture to be dumb." 
 
 The fact is, that, take love and beauty away from a man, and 
 he becomes a poor, dry stick at best ; for it is impossible to do 
 any great thing except under the inspiration of love in some 
 phase. 
 
 But all is not love that passes current as, and is very often 
 believed to really be such, — even excluding Passione, for of all 
 things in the world genuine love is the rarest and scarcest ; 
 hard to find, and difficult to keep ; besides which, it, above 
 everything else, has the most counterfeits, a very large family 
 of which have their rise and flow in, and from, that multi-phased 
 thing known as Magnetism. It was this pestiferous magnet- 
 ism from a disordered soul and nerves of a vampiral woman, 
 which nearly ruined the painter and poet recently instanced ; it 
 it was this vampiral absorption that once drove the writer 
 across the seas in order to break her hold upon his very life ; 
 it was the self-same vampirism that caused him to go nearly 
 wild, and to rush away from the basilisk blonde, else perish 
 beneath her very eyes ; it was the knowledge that he was full 
 of magnetic life and vif that once caused an amiable couple to 
 lavish kindnesses upon him, entertain, feed, picnic, and 
 sojourn with them, — because the very instant he entered their 
 stately stone mansion, that instant his very life began to ooze 
 out from him and go to the love-starved invalid woman, who 
 was literally hungry for magnetism, and whose system emitted 
 a poison sort, which penetrates the positive person, attracts, 
 and serves as a conduit to fill her emptiness with his own rich, 
 full, magnetic life. It is men and women only of the vampire 
 grade, who advocate free love, and call the infernal thing 
 divine ! It is the travelling, spouting, lecturing vampires of 
 the pseudo-spiritualistic school, who preach promiscuity, separ- 
 ate families, and sail a man or a woman Hull-deep in wretched- 
 ness and affectional hell by their specious sophistry, before the 
 
irOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 21 
 
 victims are aware of the dreadful drift. The author at this 
 writing had closed an interview with a gentleman of Ohio, 
 named — no matter, — a man utterly broken and wrecked in 
 heart and hope, and his family and himself divided by the 
 infamous teachings of a travelling philosopher, of Hell's 
 blackest school, named H — 1, who poisoned the mind of 
 the man's wife right before the husband's own face ; and the 
 writer knew another scoundrel, of the same name, whose path 
 through the land is one track of bitterness, for no man's home, 
 or wife, or child, was safe from his infernal vampiral raids on 
 homes. A third villain of the same cast, in Chicago, during the 
 author's absence in the East, in 1867, corrupted his wife, and 
 broke up a joyous family. But Mr. J-m-s-n and his male 
 victim will one day meet, on this earth or off it, and then 
 there will be a final reckoning. Reader, think of the terrible 
 crime, — of writing to an absent husband that his loved wife had 
 fallen lower than the dregs of earth, at the same time writing 
 to the wife that her husband was consorting with the scum of 
 the world ; both being lies as false as ever came from bad 
 hearts, and both schemes carried out for purposes of lust and 
 robbery ! Both successful : an honest wife ruined ; a hard 
 working man blasted, ruined, crushed to earth, and gi-oaning to 
 God that the bitter cup might pass. Out of the wrong came 
 divorce, and with it desolation. Time flew by, and then — 
 when it was too late — the fraud exploded. Now came the 
 thought, — Human revenge ? Forgiveness ? Neither, — show up 
 the s} r stem ! Break the power of these fiends ! Rescue the 
 imperilled hosts ; expose the terrible frauds, and strike the 
 fallacy dead. The last thought was the best. Death to vam- 
 pirism ! It is that which destroys husbands, desolates homes, 
 kills wives, saps the life of society, runs young children into 
 consumption, and fills the land with unnumbered horrors. The 
 destroyers abound, and the subject of vampirism in all its 
 infernal phases, all its dreadful shapes and methods, is now 
 brought forward herein, because the recital will unquestionably 
 put people on their guard ; open the eyes of many who have 
 heretofore been blinded to the real facts of their own cases ; and 
 
22 WOMAX, LOVE, AXD M ARM AGE. 
 
 enable them to clearly discriminate, first between the seeming 
 and the real ; and, secondly, to distinguish the genuine affection 
 from the false and counterfeit ; thereby showing them the safe 
 and speedy methods of deliverance and rest ; for no people on 
 earth suffer keener tortures of soul, or more unbearable mental 
 agony, than do the myriad victims of morbid magnetism ; 
 especially when it gets a tight grip upon its victims by assum- 
 ing the specious but delightful garb of actual, positive, genuine 
 affection and love. 
 
 There are strong and marked differences between the two, 
 and also between the real and other merely semblant affections 
 of the human heart and soul. 
 
 The genuineness of a love may alwaj's be questioned when- 
 ever interest, position, or passion, enter into it as a major inte- 
 grant, singly or combined ; for true love has its roots in the 
 very substance of the soul itself, and does not depend for its 
 strength, power, or perdurability. upou the superficial qualities 
 or external characteristics or qualifications of its object. A real 
 love grows by what it feeds on, and both parties to it are 
 stronger and better for and from the varied play of its varied 
 forces ; but a false love, on the contrar} r , is exhaustive and dis- 
 satisfactory in all respects. Genuine love drinks and is satis- 
 fied ; but false affection cries, " Give, give," even when the very 
 life and health, and bloom, and beaut}*, or the mental stamina, 
 strength, force, power, or energy of its object must be the sac- 
 rifice. True love ever conduces to perpetuity and increase of 
 all these, and never gloats over the ruin of the object of its 
 likes and desire. 
 
 Where a bride grows pale, weak, sickly, morbid, and continues 
 to, month after month, and year after }~ear, the genuineness of 
 the love between herself and mate is a thing of dread suspicion, 
 to say the least ; and per contra, where a man loses his higher, 
 nobler, better selfhood, grows careless, wan, shadow}', petulant, 
 irritable, the love relations between himself and wife are prob- 
 ably not of the heavenly type or most transcendently divine 
 model, character, or qualit}*. Neither is a genuine love of such 
 an ardent, impetuous, vehement, or volcanic nature, as is a false, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 23 
 
 or merely nervous love ; and all men should suspect themselves 
 when such is the case ; while a woman who suffers herself to be 
 won by a lover exhibiting such, is, to say the least about it, 
 providing a deep and sure grave not only for her health and 
 peace, but for her hopes and body ; for a passion-based love 
 comes from Hades and returns thither, generally canying both 
 parties — one certainly, the woman — along with it; whereas 
 its opposite, or normal love, hails direct from Heaven, and 
 transports its subjects there ; so great the difference between 
 this and that. 
 
 The first difference is that really true love always seeks to 
 render its object happy, even at the sacrifice of its own joy. 
 Passion-love, on the contrary, pursues exactly the opposite 
 course, and pleases itself at whatever cost to its object. 
 
 Love endures ; passion lasts but a breath ; while morbid 
 magnetism withers its victim away, leaving the sufferer miser- 
 able and wretched indeed. Love adores the mental traits ; 
 passion rejoices in the physical solely ! 
 
 It almost invariably happens that those persons who are most 
 full of real love, whose souls are richest and ripest, and whose 
 natures yearn to embalm others in its fulness, are, as a general 
 thing, the very ones who are most frequently victimized by 
 shams and counterfeits, and soonest fall a prey to the designing 
 schemers, female and male alike, who infest every society, and 
 poison every atmosphere with their rancorous breath. 
 
 While a man or woman is surrounded b} r baleful associations, 
 mental, social, or material, he or she is sure to become com- 
 pletely saturated with the poison effluvium emanating from the 
 souls and bodies of the contaminators ; and just so long as he 
 or she does so, the absorbing process goes on, and they are com- 
 pelled, as a result, to think, feel, act, and be like unto those 
 surrounding them. In just so far forth as one becomes sat- 
 urated with this essential quintessence of ghoulism, just in so 
 far do they lose sight of true human duty either to themselves 
 or their best friends ; for an infatuation seizes on them, which, 
 like a horse-leech, never lets go until it reeks and revels in the 
 blood and life of its victim. Under its influence the ideas dwell 
 
24 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 far more upon lurid passion alism, than calm and holy love ; the 
 victim is never easy ; seldom rests content, even for a moment , 
 peaceful days, quiet nights, or ease of mind, gentle sleep or 
 sweet repose, are all unknown ; and the strangest part of it all 
 is, that the victim, so long as entwined in the meshes, is never 
 so happy as when yielding all of life, and love, and hope, to the 
 base despoiler of his or her soul. Wherever that despoiler may 
 be, there will the hope, and wish, and thought of the despoiled 
 be also ; and thus passes a brief time ; desertion follows ; mad- 
 ness comes upon the scene, and sudden death or suicide ends 
 the dreadful tragedy. 
 
 Reference has already been made to a variety of love simula- 
 tions, — a remarkable series of somethings marvellously like 
 that divine existence, but which in reality are nothing whatever 
 akin thereto. 
 
 " My soul, I bid thee answer : — 
 
 How are Love's triumphs wrought ? — 
 ' Two hearts with but one feeling, 
 Two spirits with one thought.' 
 
 " And tell me how Love cometh? — 
 ' It comes unsought, unsent ! ' 
 And tell me how Love goeth ? — 
 ' It was not Love that went 1 ' " 
 
 The consideration of the subject of the affections might 
 easily lead the way to quite a large field of metaphysical and 
 transcendental inquiry, but for which the reader probably has 
 no taste, nor the writer either disposition or time ; for it is not 
 and never was proposed herein to discuss the absurd and invo- 
 lute conjugialism of Swedenborg ; the pestilential affinityism of 
 the present age ; the marriage-abrogation nonsense of vari- 
 ous high-flown " philosophers ; " the Mormon system, which, 
 having children solely for its great object, is a long remove 
 from all the others, — nor, in short, to present or deliver long 
 homilies on perfectionism or any other erratic and erotic sys- 
 tem, so much in vogue, and which are so strongly advocated by 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 25 
 
 the venal and scrofulous presses of the land. Neither is it 
 intended to take sides with any of the so-called "Woman's Eights 
 movements, all of which represent the sex as wholly wronged, 
 and the world and life nothing but perpetual martyrdom for her ; 
 simply because the statement is not true, even in the heart-rela- 
 tions of the race, for quite as many men suffer as keenly from 
 the irregularities of love in some form or other, as there do of 
 women ; and it is doubtful if more women suffer from the heart- 
 lessness of those upon whom their affections are placed, than 
 men ; and most assuredly when they do so suffer, their chances 
 of a quick recovery therefrom are even better than are those of 
 fine-nerved men. 
 
 Love is the grand circulus ceterni motus, — the great eternal 
 circular movement, — which sweeps either sex alike into the vale 
 of happiness, or dashes them, wrecked and broken, upon the 
 sterile shores of desolation ; and neither has the advantage of 
 the other in this regard. There's a great deal too much whine 
 and one-sidedness generally in the treatment and discussion of 
 these matters ; and poets sing and penners write just as if 
 women alone were possessed of hearts capable of agony and of 
 being pierced and shattered ; and as if men had leather souls, 
 as well as soles, and India-rubber affections, capable of being 
 stabbed without injury, and stretched to the crack of doom 
 without being strained or broken ! All that sort of partialism 
 is sheer rank absurdity, and the most contemptible nonsense, 
 no matter who utters it, or how high the authority, for God 
 Himself made both sexes, placed them on a common level, and 
 strung both hearts with identical cords ; and when plaj-ed upon 
 roughly each gives out the same sad wail ; and when either is 
 swept by master hands each alike swells under the touch, and 
 utters the same glad music of the soul ! Indeed, it is doubtful 
 if ever a man was so refinedly cruel in love matters as a woman 
 is capable of being. The author of this work sacredly believes 
 that even a greater percentage of women are false to their hus- 
 bands than there are of husbands false to their wives ; and that 
 more women moving in respectable ranks know where assigna- 
 tion houses are located than do married men on a general aver- 
 
26 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 age. The Helens and Emmas abound. All this may sound harsh, 
 but it is God's truth, nevertheless ; while on the score of heart- 
 less cruelty, an instance in proof that it won't do for Pot to call 
 Kettle black too soon : — There was a fair, little, slender, blue- 
 eyed woman somewhere near Montreal, Canada. She had a 
 husband, who undoubtedly loved her dearly, and whom she pre- 
 tended to love quite as intensely, sincerely, and equally well, in 
 return. For her that man had sacrificed everything, and now 
 lay on his dying bed ; yet at that very time, — she boasted of it 
 afterwards to the author of this work, — she carried on a guilty 
 liaison with a married man during the entirety of that period, 
 and her excuse was " Physiological necessity," rather Hadeio- 
 logical ! By and by he died, and she found her way to another 
 eastern city, where an Italian artist — whom she also speedily 
 ruined and left afterwards — kindly taught her a branch of art 
 whereby she could, and did, gain a fine living. Presently she 
 — the pale-faced blonde — placed her eyes on a black, igno- 
 rant, stupid negro ; at first moulded him to her will, and 
 through him soon found a new victim, around whom she threw 
 her quickly dreadful glamour ; and as soon as he was desper- 
 ately entangled, played with him as fisher-boys do a trout, or a 
 wily cat with a wretched mouse. By and by her nefarious ends 
 were gained, and she calmly tortured that man to the very brink 
 of suicide, and then coolly told him she had never cared a far- 
 thing for him, and gayly went back to her thick-lipped woolly- 
 headed lover. The result was that her victim was stricken with 
 deadly illness, and his friends flocked round to see him die, and 
 among them came that fiend in woman's garb ; and as he lay 
 there prone and helpless on the bed, she sat there and smiled as 
 coolly and pleased as if she were listening to a strain of mel- 
 ody from the last new opera bouffe of Offenbach or Herve ! Is 
 there a man living capable of deeds like that? It is extremely 
 doubtful, and let us pray that it ever may continue to be so ! 
 
 True love enables either to conquer weakness. No love, or 
 false love, adds to them new growths and force. True affection 
 goes, by inatinct, to whatever attracts it ; but it is not true 
 affection unless it wakes responsive chords in the heart it seeks ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 27 
 
 and were this touchstone applied there would be fewer desolate 
 hearts in the world. Real love awakens kindness and sympa- 
 thy, never engenders cruelty ; hence such a woman as is above 
 described was as destitute of it, as a cold-blooded, husband- 
 poisoning, Borgian murderess of sweet human pity could be ! 
 
 Many strange phenomena characterize love : sadness, light- 
 ness, despondency, elevation, and all life is viewed in every 
 color from tawny black dun to the radiant hues of summer 
 sunsets. Now it laughs at the gentle pains it visits on its 
 object ; then it makes sport of the fears it excites ; but whatever 
 its mutations may be, it is never coldly, deliberately, con- 
 tinuously, heartlessly cruel. And whenever what passes for 
 Love exhibits anything of that sort, love, real love, has no rest- 
 ing-place in any being who develops any such characteristic ; 
 but the passion is hadean, decidedly, — one of the family of the 
 fallen angels, intent, in its desperate hate of human happiness, 
 on doing deeds against individuals which the monarch of Hell 
 is believed to do on a vastly malignant and extensive scale. 
 Its battle-cry is pitched in alto, and its theme is ever the 
 passions, — wine, woman, liberty, and lager ! — and so long as 
 the senses are led captive, turns scowlingly away from all that 
 pertains to man's loftier nature, his destiny and his soul ! In 
 a word, Love lifts up, but its simulants eternally drag down ; 
 one clears the vision, the other clouds the sight, dulls perception 
 and sows broadcast the prolific seeds of crime, wretchedness, 
 ill health, aberration, insanity, and death. 
 
 Passion, selfish, leech-like, looks ever for its ideal, — purity, 
 candor, truth, virtue, sincerity ; and if it finds it, soon grows 
 weary, and starts off again, baited by new impossibilities, the 
 creation of its own unhealth, and destroys whatever it touches. 
 Love, on the contrary, clothes its object with ideal perfections, 
 strives to bring up the reality to the mental standard, and de- 
 lights to think its work being rapidly accomplished. 
 
 Passion seeks, finds, but is never satisfied even with variety. 
 Love, on the other hand, wants its object wholly to and for it- 
 self. And this fact alone ought to put an eternal quietus on 
 the sophistical gabble of the salacious philosophers who con- 
 
28 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 tend for " Free Love " or variety. God and Nature intended 
 human beings to live in couples ; and whoever fails to see that 
 fact and abide by it, is one of two things, — a scoundrel or a 
 fool! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Woman is by nature, though not in the same directions, the 
 absolute equal of Man, each excelling in certain points and 
 qualities, but exactly balancing one the other in the grand and 
 final summing up. Holding this view throughout, the author 
 makes no war against her nor her rights, — such as are true, 
 natural and real ; but he does object to, and make relentless 
 war upon, that specious system of Woman's Rightsism, which 
 proclaims free harlotage, the do-as-impulse-or-interest-prompts- 
 ism and the right of murdering her unborn child, whether 
 legitimate or not. He objects to strong-minded society-fractur- 
 ing clap-trap, and insists that she who proposes to lead 
 woman to the promised land shall herself be pare, and not a 
 thrice-branded harlot. 
 
 Take the general average of human kind in civilized lands, 
 and it will be found that in respect to suffering from affeo 
 tional causes both sexes balance each other. Equal numbers 
 of each are ruined, take to bad courses, and fall headlong into 
 the slimy ditches of vice and crime by the waysides of the 
 world, or kill themselves outright, by reason of love-aberrations 
 or from the one great want of human nature, — true companion- 
 ship. 
 
 Certain it is that no human heart, where love dwells not, can 
 possibly be happy, at least healthfully so ! and unless it is 
 sound, it is a delusion. Scripture tells us that it is not good for 
 man to be alone ; but it is equally bad, if not far worse, for a 
 woman to be alone and desolate, for various reasons ; among 
 which are, that she has not the same wide field of labor that the 
 man has, and far fewer external matters to distract her atten- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 29 
 
 tion ; and, besides, as it is the province of man to think and 
 feel, woman mainly does the latter, and without an object to 
 feel for she is desolate indeed. Man's isolation can be relieved 
 in a thousand ways, but not so woman's ; she must love or die 
 a thousand deaths, and can never be happy unless her affections 
 do have scope and play. 
 
 Passion, to some extent, may substitute love in a man's nature, 
 but never in a woman's, in any of its moods or phases. She 
 must have soul-affection, and can never rest content with blood- 
 energy, interest, friendly feeling, or any form or mode of so- 
 called magnetic attraction, except when she is a born thrall of 
 affectional disease ; but she must, to be her real, true self, drink 
 full draughts of heart-filling, soul-satisfying love. Is it not a 
 splendid truth that no man ever yet lived but in whose soul the 
 loftiest emotions he ever knew, sprung from love in some form ? 
 And what would a woman be who in her soul's deep core re- 
 jected the idea that love was the fulfilling of the law, — a law 
 printed on every fibre of her entire being ? 
 
 Without the slightest intention to materialize this divine pas- 
 sion of the human being, still must it be viewed and treated 
 primarily from a plvysical stand-point, because love always has 
 an object, and that object is a person, whose face, figure, or 
 qualities shadowed through them, are what inspires the love we 
 feel ; wherefore at this point it is well to affirm that the passion 
 treated of is a thing of Body, Brain, Nerves, Heai't, Spirit, 
 iEth and Soul, — these seven. [What is meant here by iEth is 
 the telegraphic system of souls, whereby one beats time with, 
 and responds to, the rhythmic throbbings, cadences, and pulsa- 
 tions of another, when both are pitched in the same key.] Let 
 us therefore begin at the foundation, — matter, body, phys- 
 ique, — and trace this subtle something to its source, its 
 centre, its fountains, whence it flows to make or mar the for- 
 tunes of all human kind. 
 
 It is certain, whatever God-denying materialism may affirm to 
 the contrary, that the human soul is not a rarefied form of mat- 
 ter. It is equally true that love is neither hydrogen, carbon, 
 ox ygen, or even electricity, in any form whatever, as we know 
 
30 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 and comprehend it ; but in the light of science, no sane man 
 can deny that love has a great deal to do with those self-same 
 elements ; nor that, conversely, they have a great deal to do 
 with love. It is well-known that love thrives in the sunshine, 
 sickens in the shade ; and that however ethereal it may be, it 
 still has strong affinities to good beef and sound food generally ; 
 that it flourishes better in a cottage than a cabin ; and that even 
 democratic soap and water has much to do with its culture, 
 growth, strength, depth, and perpetuity. We look in vain for it 
 to thrive in an atmosphere tainted with offensive odors, envi- 
 roned with squallor, marred by personal carelessness, or dwarfed 
 by morbid, unhealthy surroundings. An unclean person can- 
 not be loved, nor love in return, as under exactly opposite con- 
 ditions ; and unquestionably much unhappiness, and the grad- 
 ual wasting and final demise of millions of genuine loves could 
 easily be traced to neglect of these essentials to the healthful 
 growth of true affection. 
 
 Love in its nature is pure, clean, crystalline, and fine ; and 
 whatever tends, even in a remote degree, to offend its delicate 
 sense is a fatal stab at its very life. Arithmetic would have to 
 be strained to compute the number of men who have utterly 
 slain love, and rendered their homes desolate, by words, and 
 what is infinitely worse, actions, offensive to the fine susceptibil- 
 ities, delicac}', and sense of propriety, of a loving wife. The 
 ripe peach has a bloom to be not harshly rubbed off; and so, 
 too, has a woman, against which no man can offend with impu- 
 nity ; for although a woman will endure much from the man 
 she loves, yet there is a point at which she must and will resist 
 and resent ; and that point once reached, she begins to look on 
 him with different eyes than she did before. Especially in this 
 country are families broken up from this cause alone ; men 
 blindly seeming bent on wilfully ignoring the fact that there are 
 times when a wife's sanctity is not to be intruded upon in any 
 way ! 
 
 Many a male, calling himself both man and husband, when in 
 fact he is not even a fraction of either, shortly after marriage, 
 when excess begins to pall his vigor, resort to dastardly, igno- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 31 
 
 ble, loathly and abominable practices, to kindle up their fleeting 
 power, and by unutterably abominable exactions and exposures 
 blunt their wives' delicacy and sow the prolific seeds of rage, 
 hatred, and inexpressible loathing disgust in the woman's heart, 
 and open her eyes to the awful fact that what she took for a 
 man and husband turns out to be a beast and satyr, too low in 
 God's scale to be the fit associate of even the vilest Bacchante 
 on earth. 
 
 Sir, if you are not an insane fool or stupid idiot, respect your 
 wife quite as much in private, as you would were the myriad 
 eyes of all mankind watching your every action. Do this, 
 not in fear, but as a mark of tender, true, genuine manhood. If 
 you are not yet a man, try to be one, and your wife, if she be 
 half a woman, will help you in the good work. A woman is a 
 very fine clock, and she won't keep time, or come to it either, in 
 any sense, unless carefully tended and properly wound up. There, 
 do you understand? — wound up, but not ivounded! Don't 
 forget it ! 
 
 Love, being fine, sensitive, delicate, whatever is coarse, 
 rough, rude or immodest, is incompatible, not only with its 
 nature, but with any one of its myriad moods and phases ; and 
 nothing is more absolutely certain than that it wanes, becomes 
 enfeebled, and finally takes wing or dies outright, of surfeits of 
 anger, jealousy, liquor, tobacco, soiled linen, foul morals, bad, 
 coarse language, and pernicious personal habits. 
 
 Now mark one of love's hidden mysteries : so fine and sensi- 
 tive a thing is it, that no man can long deceive the woman who 
 loves him ; nor the wife a loving husband, because no act, how- 
 ever secret, whether it be of love, passion, or anger, but indeli- 
 bly marks or prints itself upon the actor so forcibly too, that 
 the shadow of the wrong thing photographs itself upon the 
 wronger and the wronged alike. The human soul may be fairly 
 compared with, and likened to, a very sensitive photographic 
 plate, just prepared to receive the shadow to be thrown upon it 
 by the operator ; because whatever influence affects the human 
 being in any wa} r , invariably and inevitably so impresses itself 
 upon the individual, that any sensitive person can feel, sense, 
 and know it with an almost absolute certainty ; and although 
 
32 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 all persons are not fine and sensitive ordinarily, yet all are so 
 without exception in the departments of our common human 
 nature, where love has its rise and outflow. Hence a man false 
 to his wife or fiancee cannot successfully hide his duplicity, or 
 victoriously lie to her, for she is sure to sense, and feel it, no 
 matter how eloquent may be his plea of innocence. This is 
 why so many husbands marvel at the growing coldness of their 
 wives ; wonder what it can be that is daily sundering the domes- 
 tic ties ; for they have done nothing, that the wife knows any- 
 thing about ; that little folly, this little escapade, the other 
 small trifle, were secrets from her ; she knew nothing about 
 it ; then what can the matter be ? How in the name of com- 
 mon sense did she find out that so and so met him at such and 
 such a place, and so on and so forth ? Fool, do you not know 
 that a loving woman is at one and the same time the blindest 
 of mortals, and the sharpest of clairvoyants ? No ! then the 
 greater fool you, not to have learned that fact long ago ! 
 " What's the matter ? " Listen : — 
 
 The matter simply is that he sinned, erred, went astray, and 
 brought back to his own fireside the tell-tale proofs of his own 
 sad fault, ground into his very being ; printed on his every 
 feature ; engraved upon his face ; dyed in his actions ; en- 
 grafted on his body, spirit, soul, and fully impregnated in the 
 sphere evolved every moment from all three ! Thai is just what 
 the matter is ; only this and nothing more. 
 
 You cannot tell a perfectly successful falsehood to any one. 
 much less to a woman, and above all to a woman who loves the 
 man who attempts to outrage her feminine instincts and 
 impose upon her wifely nature. A falsehood is the worst 
 investment in a love-relation ever made by man ; for it is 
 certain to defeat itself in the long run, and sooner or later will 
 parade its deformity to all who have eyes. Murder will out, 
 and so will a lie. 
 
 It has been asserted that love is quite as much a thing of 
 matter as of mind ; but while this is, to a certain extent, quite 
 true, yet it is not altogether so ; but nevertheless there is no 
 disputing the fact that the more perfect our health of mind and 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 33 
 
 body is, the purer our habits, methods of life, sleeping, eating, 
 drinking ; the cleaner and clearer are our physical systems, 
 forms, conditions, blood, skin, brains, nerves, fluids, solids, and 
 physical states generally, the better chance have lofty and holy 
 influences to guide us aright in the devious crooks and turnings 
 of the varied life we are all compelled to walk in while we live 
 on earth. The higher we stand on the scale of perfect health 
 the better able are we to beat back the smiling temptations to 
 sin which meet and lure us at every step we take in the long 
 journey, which begins when we step forth, tottering, from the 
 dear arms of the mother whose joy and hope we were, and, 
 leading over deep valleys and rough mountains, brings us to 
 the shore of the mystic stream, across the bridge of death, and 
 then over the table-lands of the far-off Heaven, to that grand 
 destiny which He only comprehends and fully knows, who in 
 infinite wisdom placed us here and said, "Begin thy task — 
 Achievement ! " but who will never say, " Ended," while a 
 single arm of the infinite polygon of Being remains untravelled, 
 its wondrous mysteries unexplored ! Thus Love leads man 
 to heaven, religion, advancement, action ; while mere pas- 
 sion (and all love's counterfeits) turns our feet aside, and 
 draws us down to perdition and to ruin, mental, social, 
 moral, emotional, and material. It matters not who affirms the 
 contrary. 
 
 No American reader can have much patience with the morbid 
 lucubrations of Michelet, respecting woman, nor can any 
 healthy reader entertain much respect for the far worse, and 
 infinitely more dangerous, notions on the same subject of late 
 years put forth by scores of so-called reformers in our own 
 land, not a few of whom claim to be spiritualists, but whom the 
 better class of that body of people will one day begin to see 
 through, and ignore accordingly. 
 
 It is clear that a sound soul needs, and ought to have, a 
 sound and healthy body ; and still clearer that a sound and 
 healthy love imperatively demands correspondent physical 
 conditions and mental health. And the better off we are in 
 these respects, the stronger, higher, better, nobler, and purer 
 
34 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 will, nay, must be, the loves we, in the first place, are capable 
 of inspiring in the breast of another ; and in the second, of 
 cherishing and entertaining toward the object which calls the 
 emotion forth from the deeps of our inner, as well as from the 
 surface of our outer nature. 
 
 The higher we ourselves stand on the plane of true man and 
 womanhood, the broader, deeper, more enduring and satis- 
 factory, in all conceivable respects, will be our loves, and 
 especially and emphatically those which arise between the 
 two sexes, in accordance with the divine will and law, which 
 we were placed here to obey and observe, — not to abuse and 
 violate, as too many of us do. 
 
 When this book was begun, its author intended to give a 
 scientific analysis of the human body, brain, bones, solids, 
 fluids, etc. ; and to lay down a comprehensive system, born of 
 the experience and sufferings, physical and emotional, of several 
 of the writei"'s friends ; but second thoughts, which are always 
 best, suggested the query, What do persons in love care for 
 science ? Whoever buys the book and comes to that part will 
 be sure to skip it ! and so that matter is left out, which leads to 
 the remark that common sense is, after all, the finest kind of 
 sense, besides being, as a corrective of any little morbidity 
 lurking in any part of our systems, — physical, moral, mental, 
 and affectional, — probably the very best medicine ever taken, 
 provided always it be properly digested. Well, common sense 
 says, Is it reasonable to expect to be loved without one's self 
 using every lawful effort to become lovable? Answer it, 
 reader, for yourself. Is it possible to live along, day after day, 
 under the influence of impulse, chance, accident, whatever may 
 be the day's fortunes, and expect the loves of the home side to 
 grow strong and luxuriant, without taking any pains to render 
 them so? and the question is addressed to man and woman 
 alike. Is it reasonable? Answer again. If such pains were 
 generally taken by the untold millions of unhappy wedded 
 people, a great many of whom thank Heaven that divorce laws 
 exist, — which laws unquestionably do more harm than good, — 
 is it reasonable to think so many divorce sharpers, some of 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 35 
 
 whom wax fat on rank perjury, and all flourish on wrong and 
 injustice, would damn the land they live in, and drive fast 
 teams at the cost of the hard earnings of many an erring, but, 
 at the base, well-meaning man and woman, whose great fault 
 lies in trying to be wretched, and not to be happy? If people 
 would only examine a little closer, it would be found that nine 
 out of every ten divorce suits, or unhappy marriages, grow out 
 of the interference of meddlers, tattlers, gossips, pretended 
 friends to one or other of the parties concerned, but actually, 
 practically, enemies to both. Do you not think so, reader? 
 
 " Passional attraction ! " " AffhnMyism ! " Shame ! Let 
 any man or woman revel in such delusions to their hearts' con- 
 tent, and " There's no home like the old home, no love like the 
 old love, no husband (or wife) like the old one, after all ! " is, 
 and will be, forever, the inevitable verdict in the heart, no mat- 
 ter if the proud lip does refuse to speak the words or not ; for 
 such an experience proves to the hasty man or woman, led 
 astray by such philosophy and dreadful teachings, that some- 
 thing more than magnetic attraction, passionalism, and such 
 destructive, radical, new-school doctrines, are required to quiet 
 the unrest, and satisfy the sore yearnings of the troubled heart. 
 
 A story : A miser lost upon the desert. Thirsty, he beheld 
 afar off a glittering brook ; ran to it, reached the place, where 
 tall palms shadowed earth with their heavy crowns of greenery, 
 and rich clusters of luscious-looking dates. He shook the trees 
 — and " Allah, Allah ! they are only pearls and diamonds!" 
 Burning up with fervent heat, he ran to the brookside ; but, 
 alas ! the rock gave forth only broad sheets of sparkling jewels. 
 Horror ! He was a-hungered, and only baubles to satisfy him ! 
 athirst, and only molten jewels to appease it ! And then came 
 Azrael, the terrible Angel of Death, and flapped his sable 
 wings in the dying miser's face, for awhile, then stretched forth 
 his hand to strike, and — the miser awoke. "Allah be praised, 
 'twas but a dream ! " Thenceforth he lived a better life, and 
 blessed the world with his power and wealth. Well, affinityism 
 and passional attraction, like lust and rum, and great wealth, 
 are but horrid morbid dreams, as void of real happiness and 
 
36 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 true joy as were the mock waters, and stony fruit of the Cai- 
 reen's wondrous dream. Would to our Father in Heaven we 
 could reason well and find these things out before the last sad 
 steps are taken, which are alwaj^s sure to part us from a little 
 domestic certainty, to wreck us on the rocks of adversity ! Oh, 
 the multitudes of parted wives and husbands, who, too late, 
 find out what they have lost, and who would give half their 
 lives for the chance of once more trying to be happy with the 
 first love in the old home, by the old well-side ! 
 
 Discontent feeds itself on excuses ; is opposed to love ; does 
 not believe in trying to mend matters ; but ever insists upon 
 making things worse, and in looking at the dark side. It is 
 wonderfully quick at finding flaws, but is stone blind to the bet- 
 ter side, and can never once see the shining shores of Hope and 
 Possibility. It ever yields to excitement ; magnifies mole-hills 
 into most stupendous mountains ; is full of excitement ; takes 
 Impulse as chief counsellor ; listens gladly to the tale-bearer, 
 and will destroy the best home on earth in less time than it 
 took to build one of its closets ! It is a morbid cannibal, who 
 feeds on human hearts, and, like a cancer, grows deeper every 
 day. People know this too ; yet in spite of reason, common 
 sense, and every healthful power besides, seem to take pleasure 
 in culturing the monster, until hearts are wrecked, hopes shat- 
 tered, and domestic ruin scatters salt and ashes on the sites of 
 once happy homes ; and all for want of a little, very little, 
 patience, common sense, and TRY ! 
 
 We all have a weak and a strong side, but are more prone tc 
 yield to the former than follow the counsels of the latter. 
 This, probably, results from the power of a third element, — 
 Wilfulness ; a thing we like to yield to, no matter how wrong 
 the thing may seem ; and hundreds of women, and men too, 
 have fallen and gone astra} T , not from a bad heart, intent, or 
 even "strong temptation, but from a sudden gush of vril fulness, — 
 "just for fun," — an experiment that has wrecked many a good 
 man and woman ! Impulse is a very dangerous customer, for, 
 although sometimes prompting to the right, its chief delight is 
 to rush us to the wrong. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 37 
 
 Apropos to this section of the general subject, but especially 
 to what has just been offered. Suicide statistics prove beyond 
 contradiction that more men kill themselves than women ; that 
 more male suicides result from love causes, domestic trouble, 
 and deranged affection, than do those of women from identical 
 causes. More single persons of both sexes kill themselves than 
 married ones, and more divorced persons than the widowed. 
 The statistics of insanity demonstrate that more men become 
 demented from love causes and domestic infelicity than women ; 
 and more insanity in both sexes follows the breaking up of 
 homes, and the estrangement of married people, than from any 
 three other causes combined ; while the same authority declares 
 that more vice, crime, and drunkenness results from these break- 
 ings-up, and among those thus broken, parted, separated, than 
 among the combined ranks of those who are single, widowed, 
 or living in the married relation ; and for these most cogent 
 reasons it behooves society to take prompt and effective 
 measures to preserve itself by putting an estoppel upon the 
 brawlers for divorce, and that class of so-called New Lights, 
 who, unfit to enjoy the blessings of marriage themselves, sate a 
 depraved appetite by rendering others discontented ; and by 
 morbid reasonings sapping the very foundations of the social 
 structure, and transforming earth into a bedlam too black and 
 filthy to be described, — too turbid and sickening to be en- 
 dured. 
 
 It is hard to tell what a mosquito was made for, except to 
 murder us in detail. Now you hear him, and then you don't. 
 B-z-z-z-z-z-z ! Slap ! but he's gone, only to attack you some- 
 where else and gorge himself with your heart's best blood. The 
 only thing is to lay low for that mosquito ; keep cool and shady ; 
 be still. See ! He thinks you are napping, and resolves to go 
 in for a delicious feed — at your expense ! There, now he has 
 lit, — careful, — raise your hand, softly. Now strike ! Good ! 
 you've hit him. That mosquito will bite no more. He's rightly 
 served. You've mashed him, and served him right, you exclaim, 
 and so say all of us ; so say we all. Well, what's the difference 
 between a rampant, radical, social disorganize!', who goes round 
 
38 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAURI AGE. 
 
 sapping the lives and blighting the joys of pure-minded, inno- 
 cent women, under various sophistical pleas, and a mosquito? 
 Mash him! grind the wretch to powder ! The sooner the world 
 gets rid of all such vermin, insectivorous or human, the better 
 for those who are left behind, — and so say all of us ! 
 
 The human race delights in wholesale murder, and our fairest 
 ladies gayly deck us off for war ; but when murder is on a small 
 scale it shocks us. 3 jet us hope to outlive it on both scales ; 
 still while the thing is fashionable one cannot help regretting 
 that so many good people are slain, and that so few mosqmtos 
 are compelled to face the music, and be sent to where their 
 sins will be fewer and their chances for improvement infinitely 
 enhanced. What follows in the next paragraph does not in- 
 clude men and women who are parted, nor loose characters ; nor 
 men and their wives who tacitly ignore their marital relations ; 
 nor does it include harloty wives, or libertinish husbands ; but 
 it only means the loving, true wives of true and loving men, as 
 the first class, and innocent young girls in the second ; and this 
 is the paragraph : The author fully justifies any man in publicly 
 horsewhipping any "Philosopher" who dares try to foist free- 
 love doctrines on that man's honest wife and daughters ! If that 
 philosopher should succeed in corrupting that man's wife and 
 daughters, or either of them, that man is justified in avenging 
 the wrong, no matter to what extent he may go, provided always 
 that the women were pure beforehand, and gave no overt en- 
 couragement to the seducer ; for in that case the latter' s punish- 
 ment would be a great wrong, and his killing, wilful diabolic 
 murder. Hence McFarland was wrongly acquitted, for the man 
 and woman were alike culpable, if culpability there was about 
 the case at all. If a female seduces a man from allegiance from 
 his wife, home, and children, the wife is justified in arousing 
 public sentiment against the errant harlot, and in making her 
 surfer for the wrong in any way in her power, — even to the 
 extent of moderate lynching. If any man or woman takes ad- 
 vantage of the common idea of the right of free speech, and 
 uses that right in the enunciation of doctrines favoring concu- 
 binage, free love, and the destruction of the family and social 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 39 
 
 compact, any community is perfectly justified in tarring, 
 feathering, and riding on a rail out of town, any and all such 
 disturbers of the public health and morals. If bad women and 
 worse men establish houses of assignation and infamy, insurance 
 companies ought not to pay damages when the people, headed 
 by the wives of that town, burn that den to the ground ; and the 
 wives are justified in getting rid of such a calamitous nuisance 
 in any possible way. 
 
 Another thing against infidelity seems to have escaped notice. 
 It is the notorious fact that a man who succeeds in seducing a 
 wife from her duty and home never respects the victim ! and no 
 love, truly, such can exist where respect is not ! Nor can the 
 woman respect the man for whom she has forsaken all ! True, 
 for a time, while novelty lasts and passion reigns, she may be 
 joyous, but never happy ; for happiness is incompatible with 
 guilt, and can never be built upon a wrong, and there inevitably 
 comes a period wherein grief, sorrow, and anguish help to 
 finish the sad work which impulse and folly began. For that is 
 not love which degrades its object, but is a weird, unhealthy 
 semblance of it, which conquers only to despise, and eventually 
 ruin and destroy. 
 
 To preserve the true integrity of our souls, we must learn to 
 be reasonable, yield to neither whim, caprice, or excitement, 
 and ever before acting look the possible consequences fairly in 
 the face, and will and determine to withstand the pressure, and 
 be true to justice, right, and self-respect ; for if you yield even 
 once, and become conscious of your own guilt, even though it 
 be a dead secret, it will fill you with bitter and terrible remorse ; 
 for its memory, like that of Herod, will keep coming up as a 
 ghost, and " It is John whom I beheaded ! He is risen from the 
 dead ! " will be your secret cry, even when none but God can 
 hear. 
 
 If we be true to our better nature, that is all that God himself 
 can require of us. It is impossible to hide ourselves from our- 
 selves, no matter whither we run, what subterfuges we resort to, 
 or how deep the deluding sophistry we try to believe. Be right, 
 be just, and then we have a safe and very trusty pilot, who will 
 
40 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 triumphantly lead us out of difficulty, away from temptation, 
 and back into the fold of human duty. Failing in this regard, 
 we cease to be real men and women, save only in appearance ; 
 and forthwith relapse into the tool and slave, — the despicable 
 automaton of impulse, — the sport and plaything of passion or 
 of capricious whim, — a power without a conscience, whose 
 mission and purpose it is to use us up in every sense, and then, 
 when we are powerless, remorselessly whistle us down the wind, 
 shatter our peace, wreck all our hopes, and land our bodies 
 under the sod, and our immortal souls, before their time, where 
 they are not wanted ; for no soul can be fully ripe and prepared 
 for the change until its work below is finished ; no soul can be 
 wanted in the higher worlds unless it be pure, clean, sound, and 
 well-fitted for transplanting in the garden of our God on the 
 other side of Time. Therefore it is incumbent on us all to 
 never forget, but to ever remember, that if we are driven by im- 
 pulse as against sound, healthy principle, we may, under its 
 persuasive spell, which is, after all, but a disguised, yet sharp 
 and cruel spur, be caused to do many a foolish act, and after- 
 ward, when looking back upon our whim and its consequences, 
 wring our hands in anguish, and wonderingly, weeping bitterly 
 repentant tears all the while, exclaim, when too late, " Who'd 'a 
 thought it ! " Avoid all such disastrous chances, which can 
 only be done by prayerfully, sincerely keeping the lines of a 
 true individuality intact and distinct — by ever being strongly 
 one's self, in the higher, nobler, holier sense. If we fail, there's 
 no telling where, when, or how the baneful results may end. 
 A little timely common sense is, in matters of the soul's affec- 
 tions and the heart, worth whole tons of the modern stuff 
 absurdly called " Philosophy ; " for but very few of the philoso- 
 phers have enough common sense, or honesty either, to last them 
 over night, seeing that they preach a great deal more good than 
 they practise. Millions of very good people have been vic- 
 timized by a specious sophism well put ; and have been ruined 
 soul, body, and morals, just because they failed to " keep cool'' 
 a moment, and in that moment lost sight of prudence and the 
 right path, by reason of the murky haze of what may not ira- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 41 
 
 properly be called u high-falutin" philosophy, physical, mag- 
 netical, metaphysical, transcendental, and — jackassical, that 
 is — Wetherbee-ish. 
 
 It is altogether a too common mistake in people to either 
 confound the amatory passion with the principle of love, or to 
 imagine that as love's object and principal mission to man ; and 
 a greater or more fatal error never yet existed. True it is that 
 in normal, healthful marriage, that element and its triplicate 
 offices are good under proper circumstances, — the holiest, most 
 sacred and mysterious, in the whole domain of our wonderful 
 existence ; but are only such when kept in leading strings, for 
 then they are excellent servitors at the banquet of life ; but if 
 they are allowed to assume too great importance, and usurp the 
 place of love itself; if passion be let loose, its moral leash 
 unfastened, it will soon get the upper hand, be dissatisfied at 
 home, and go abroad to appease its abnormally whetted appe- 
 tite, and then farewell Peace, Quiet, Happiness, Home; for it 
 forthwith becomes an inexorable tyrant and master, wanting all 
 it sees, but wanting nothing long ! If we become timely 
 apprised of its power, its baleful taste for variety ; if we keep 
 wide awake, hold the reins with a firm hand, it will amble most 
 beautifully along the lanes of life ; but if we let it once catch 
 us napping, it will seize the bit between its teeth, and the vic- 
 tim finds himself — or she does — astride a furious steed, des- 
 perately bent on galloping its rider to perdition in the shortest 
 possible period of time. But says the caviller, "You can't keep 
 cool always, when blood, brain, nerves, and fancy are all on 
 fire ; and if love attacks us fiercely, reason goes to sleep, and 
 passion steps in and proves its power to make fools of the 
 strongest, wisest, firmest, and holiest man or woman that 
 ever breathed the air in this or any other land ! " The answer 
 to this is simple. He or she who cannot command. him or her- 
 self are neither man nor woman, but only grown-up children. 
 There are two general classes of people in the world, — the 
 creatures of impulse, and those in whom cool reason reigns par- 
 amount. The last are those who can, do, and will resist what- 
 ever is injurious, even if by that resistance the}' both give and 
 
42 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 suffer pain. It has already been proven that genuine love 
 
 strengthens. Hence it follows that weaklings have that lesson 
 yet to learn ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 If all parents loved each other as they should, — and they 
 have no right to become such unless they do, for the vested 
 interests of society are injured, directly a child is born from a 
 union where love reigns not, but which is launched on the sea 
 of life amidst domestic infelicity and social storms, out of 
 which launchings spring ten-elevenths of the sin, vice, mis- 
 ery, wretchedness, and crime, under which the world is groaning 
 to-day, and will continue to until love and marriage are better 
 understood and their laws obeyed than they have been, in our 
 time at least ; were they thus heeded — not one of us but would 
 be happier for it, even if we were not personal sharers in the 
 direct benefits ; because if others are happ}^, that sort of a 
 " sphere " must environ them, and of course all of us must per- 
 force have some of the general joy reflected upon us. 
 
 When we have love-troubles, we rush to stimulants to forget 
 our griefs, and of course make matters ten times worse for our- 
 selves. 
 
 A quart of gin enabled him to bridge the gulf between Ida 
 soul and hers, and reach the hell upon the further side. What 
 good did it do? None! What evil? What wretchedness? 
 Whole oceans and towering mountains ! Love-troubled soul, 
 never try to escape the pang by the bridge of drink or opium, 
 or anything but God's direct aid, for madness lies that way ! 
 Shun it as a pestilence or a ravening death, for it means 
 destruction ! If the terrible evil resulting from such causes 
 stopped with the parties directly concerned, it were bad indeed, 
 but it does not, which is horrible ; for, flowing from that prolific 
 fountain is a constant and ever-swelling stream of idiocy, angu- 
 larity, vice, crime, imbecility, insanity, and wretchedness beyond 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 43 
 
 computation, entailed upon the innocent children of such 
 parents ; consumption, cancer, scrofula, which are but the 
 external forms of affectional disorders, the manifestations of 
 violated love-law, on the part of some one of the foretime ; nor 
 is there a gambler, robber, murderer, or prostitute on earth, the 
 seeds of whose moral and mental disasters were not sown in an 
 unloving union between father and mother before the victims, 
 as well as sinners, were launched upon the sea of life ! 
 
 It is somewhat strange how long a fact will remain in com- 
 munity wholly unnoticed until some lucky observer points it 
 out ; and then everybody wonders why they failed to see it 
 before. Now, here is one of that very identical family of facts ; 
 the absence of love in a household, as a steady, genuine, active 
 principle, accounts fully for the periodic, and magnetic — be- 
 cause magnetic — outbursts of anger, jealousy, hatred, quarrels. 
 Now for »the fact ; the births of at least six-tenths of civilized 
 children occur within forty weeks after the making up of a 
 family quarrel, — which accounts for the bad milk in many 
 human " cocoa-nuts." Maternity just as surely results in such 
 cases, as that two and two make four. The law is natural ; the 
 principle magnetic ; results are by reason of the temporary 
 reaction of the entire being ; and the fruit of that tree must 
 perforce be gnarled and warty, — the resultant soul be dwarfed, 
 crooked, angular, volcanic, scoriae, deranged, diseased, de- 
 formed. For " I the Lord thy God . . visit the sins of 
 the parents upon the children." 
 
 The most sacred human right is that of being born in love, 
 of love, through love ! Such children never need doctors or 
 the birch ; such youths never run into bad courses ; such people 
 never need lawyers, jails, state-prisons, or the gallows ; and 
 over the bodies of such people coroners never hold inquests, 
 nor render verdicts " suicide, from unknown causes ; " nor 
 do such persons thus parented ever need padded cells in insane 
 retreats to prevent them from dashing their brains out ; nor 
 are such ever seen in low haunts, or reeling home, mad drunk, 
 in the vain effort to throw off a load of chronic misery, be- 
 
44 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 queathed to them by parents who loved not each other, and 
 brought them thither in the midst of social storms. 
 
 Many of us poor men and women suffer a whole life through 
 because we were launched into being under just such circum- 
 stances ! — a thing of which there is no need and never will be ; 
 for five minutes of cool talk, each party determining to be just 
 and true, will avert all quarrels and then, if after such 
 double victories God gives increase, it will be the growth of 
 summer tide, not the barren bleakness of cold and dreadful 
 winter, — as now ! 
 
 Wives are hypocritical whenever unloved, and will play a 
 game of deception too deep for the cunning of the ablest man 
 living ! A woman's nature from top to toe is an eternal 
 protest against deprivation of, or isolation in, love ; she 
 must love or die ; else she will steal — what passes for it ; and 
 no man living can prevent her if she makes up ker*mind to 
 gratify, not passion, — for, thank God, nearly all women are 
 above that! — but her desire to be loved and love in return. 
 If a man loves his wife, not all earth and wealth, and fame, and 
 power — nay, all of them combined, with the forces of Hades to 
 back them — can win her to a single act against his honor or her 
 own ! In which respect even the lowliest of her sex stands 
 towering in virtue and grandeur amazingly above the best man 
 who yet has walked this modern earth. 
 
 " Oh, the holocaust of human hearts ! Oh, the lakes of 
 bitter tears ! and all because affection is butchered and its laws 
 and rights unheeded. Down South, during the war, in New 
 Orleans, Judge Salmon P. Chase and the writer of this was at 
 the examination of a negro school, officered by a carpet-bagger 
 named Warren, who, to .show off his proficiency as teacher, put 
 his little sharp-eyed pupils through their best paces, and 
 halted one whole class by first asking them to explain to the 
 judge that a penholder in his hand was a "corrugated" 
 utensil; while the reading book, was a " parallelopiped " in 
 shape. After it was over one bright little fellow called his 
 mates about him and said, " De teacher said dat it was a 
 barrel full o' pie plant, but I'm damn if 'twarn't a book ! " 
 
WOMAN) LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 45 
 
 Well, a home without love is a parallelopiped, but with it a 
 book ! — a book of life, and joy, and peace, with a full index, 
 good print, and illustrated by the King Artist, God 
 Almighty ! It is in two volumes, — one to be read and 
 mastered on earth ; the other for perusal in heaven, forever and 
 for aye. 
 
 It is time that men begun in reality to understand that the 
 grand central thought of God is Love, and that its manifested 
 incarnation is — Woman ! 
 
 When husbands and wives love each other, nature will take 
 especial pains and pride in giving them perfect, diseaseless 
 offspring as a result, just to show her good intentions, and 
 what she is capable of accomplishing under proper conditions. 
 
 We have been told very frequently of late years, by various 
 " reformers," — Heaven save the mark ! — that parentage should 
 always be on purpose and by rule, — just the self-same ones 
 that govern the stock-breeder in his farm-yard ; totally oblivious 
 of the fact that human beings are not on a level with the brute 
 beasts of forest, field, and fen ; and that an infinitely higher 
 range of laws are applicable to, and govern, man, than rules the 
 lowing herds. When that idea was advanced to the author of 
 this work, and an expression of opinion solicited, the reply was, 
 Such philosophers are fools ! What they call philosophy is 
 really nonsense, preceded by a clash and two d's ! People are 
 always talking about man's animal passions. Would to 
 Heaven he were as pure and true as are the beasts, for they 
 love, and herd together year .in and year out ; seldom have 
 misunderstandings, but bravely defend each other ; while, as 
 for ardor, they always use, but never abuse it ! Its season and 
 uses come and go, and they obey the divine instinct, and then 
 wait content till winter is away and blooming spring comes 
 once again. But man ! Excuse us, clear animals, for degrad- 
 ing you to the level of millions who pass for, but alas ! are not, 
 men, because they forget, which you never do, that love, when 
 healthy, is always pure, therefore ever tender, winning, persua- 
 sive, gallant, chivalrous, concessive, emotional, considerate, 
 appealing, kind, and should be, mutual. Beasts are never 
 
46 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAURI AGE. 
 
 guilty of the dreadful crime, rape ; men, so called, notoriously 
 are, whether a legal sanction stands its defence or not. True 
 love is never harsh, hasty, imperative, demanding, cruel, or 
 unjust, selfish, importunate, or exacting ; save, of course, on the 
 part of the woman, down to whose soul is descending the 
 divine elements of a coming son or daughter ; and he who will 
 not humor a woman then is not fit to have her, — is less — a 
 great deal less — than half a man ! 
 
 Please, in connection with what has just been written, read 
 this from Swinburne, and read it very slowly, carefully : — 
 
 "Before the beginning of years 
 
 There came to the making of man 
 Time, with a gift of tears ; 
 
 Grief, with a glass that ran ; 
 Pleasure, with pain for leaven ; 
 
 Summer, with flowers that fell ; 
 Remembrance fallen from heaven, 
 
 And madness risen from hell ; 
 Strength without hands to smite ; 
 
 Love that endures for a breath ; 
 Night, the shadow of light, 
 
 And life, the shadow of death. 
 
 "And the high gods took in hand 
 
 Fire, and the falling of tears, 
 And a measure of sliding sand 
 
 Prom under the feet of the years ; 
 And froth and drift of the sea, 
 
 And dust of the laboring earth, 
 And bodies of things to be 
 
 In the houses of death and of birth ; 
 And wrought with weeping and laughter, 
 
 And fashioned with loathing and love 
 "With life before and after, 
 
 And death beneath and above, 
 For a day and a night and a morrow 
 
 That his strength might endure for a span, 
 With travail and heavy sorrow, 
 
 The holy spirit of man. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 47 
 
 " From the winds of the north and south 
 
 They gathered as unto strife ; 
 They breathed upon his mouth, 
 
 They rilled his body with life ; 
 Eyesight and speech they wrought 
 
 For the veils of the soul therein ; 
 A time for labor and thought, 
 
 A time to serve and to sin : 
 They gave him light in his ways, 
 
 And love, and space for delight, 
 And beauty and length of days, 
 
 And night, and sleep in the night. 
 
 " His speech is a burning fire ; 
 
 With his lips he travaileth; 
 In his heart is a blind desire, 
 
 In his eyes foreknowledge of death ; 
 He weaves and is clothed with derision, 
 
 Sows and shall not reap : 
 His life is a watch or a vision 
 
 Between a sleep and a sleep." 
 
 Than that no truer poem ever fell from human lips or pen , 
 because in the new light here thrown upon its recondite mean- 
 ing, it looms up as a new revelation ! 
 
 Then, when she is fulfilling her sacred mission, and is in the 
 variable climate of whim, mood, caprice, — now December, then 
 July, anon running the entire gamut of change, — he who gazes 
 on her with other than purely human eyes had better close 
 them ; for then she is the grandest mystery that ever moved J 
 and no true man can then look into the profound depths of her 
 soul save in grateful, silent, holy awe ; nor peer into the laby- 
 rinths of her divinely luminous eyes without being stirred to 
 the very floor of manhood ; for to look is to be inspired, and 
 inspiration and love are twins, born of one mother, sired by one 
 God! 
 
 And yet, despite a world's experience, there are what look like 
 men, who insanely fly at a woman, in anger, mauvaise ardor, or 
 worse, then, when, if ever, she should nestle in his heart and be 
 comforted and stilled. Then, what pass for, but are not really, 
 
48 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 men, neglect her more than ever, and fail to render her the love, 
 tenderness, delicacy and respect which are her due, — the due of 
 every human woman when bearing the burden of immortality 
 from Eternity to Time ! But neglect, ill-treatment, is too often 
 her lot, and many a woman has fallen into the cold grave for 
 lack of sympathy, love, and forbearance, when she needed it most. 
 There are man}' methods of murder which are not recognized as 
 such before human tribunals, but which are none the less effect- 
 ive, and murder for all that ; and thousands of women have 
 been tortured and harassed into premature shrouds, whom a 
 fair share of decent consideration and affection would have kept 
 on earth for many a long and happy year. That is murder ! 
 
 Woman nature is a very queer thing. Let a man hector and 
 quarrel with his wife ; and immediately thereafter let another 
 man condole with her, and if that husband does not wear a 
 splendid pair of cuckold horns it will not be because she is not 
 seducible, himself a dolt, and the sympathizing condoler not 
 susceptible, nor the opportunity ready made ; for under just 
 such circumstances thousands of good women have fallen. A 
 word to the wise, et cetera, and so forth ! 
 
 That is not a model household, but a very frequent one in 
 these latter days, wherein the heads pride themselves on the 
 tact with which they have mutually outwitted each other : where 
 the man, who, as he discusses his morning chop, smiles gayly in 
 his sleeve at his exploit of the last night, and thinks, as he 
 looks at the occupant of the chair at the other end of the 
 breakfast-table, " Oh, ho, my fine lady, you're little aware of 
 what a good time I had with Dolly and Betty, and Polly and 
 Hetty, and Miss Smirk and Mrs. Folloll ! — ah, what a pleasant 
 time ! you bet ! " All the while little dreaming of how she is 
 thinking as she hands the matutinal coffee : " Heigh-ho ! you 
 little dream of what a glorious time i" had with dear darling 
 Fitz Augustus Mountjoy ! — the duck ! What a pair of horns 
 you are wearing, to be sure ! How happy you'd be if you only 
 knew it, my dear ! " And so goes the poison in society, ever 
 spreading, ever spreading! Who's to blame? Society itself ! 
 which, by encouraging morbid thought, and thinkers, new- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 49 
 
 fangled notions of individual liberty, and an atrocious abun- 
 dance of " pkilosophico-scientific, barnyardistical sophisms, has 
 lost sight of the dear old-fashioned, true-hearted loves of the 
 homeside, and has learned to call vice by pleasant-sounding 
 names, as "individual sovereignty" for libertinism and adul- 
 tery, "passional entertainment" for barefaced proftigacy, and 
 " personal ownership " for unblushing prostitution ! It is time 
 a stop was put to all such blasphemous stuff, and all such 
 mental cancers lopped off before the very life of society is com- 
 pletely sapped, drained, ruined. 
 
 In these rapid days love in its external phases has been dei- 
 fied, while its soul and spirit have utterly been lost sight of alto- 
 gether ; and men have become blinded to the fact that too great 
 devotion at the altar of mere sensationalism and nervous life is 
 deeply injurious to all concerned, and is sure to beget disgust, 
 satiety, and all their fearful train ; for there is no happiness, no 
 real joy, no genuine, healthy pleasure, when marriage rites 
 degenerate into orgies fit only for fiends, never for human 
 beings. To say nothing of the mental disasters accruing from 
 perversion of a natural sense, it inevitably defeats its own end 
 in a magnetic and nervous direction ; because the system is 
 drained of its highest and rarest elements, the very ones that 
 are needed in greatest abundance to enable us to sustain the 
 shocks and wear of our daily life ; and instead of being richly 
 charged with power, our lungs are robbed of oxygen, the brain 
 of phosphorus, and the blood becomes loaded down with urea, 
 carbon, and eartlry phosphates, impeding venous and arterial 
 circulation, and laying the sure foundation of physical disor 
 ders ere life is half ended. The lower brain becomes inflamed, 
 the top brain dull and softened ; the baser passions intensify, 
 and the lofty ones die out ; affection is lost sight of ; passion in 
 its grossest form becomes a constant dream and motive ; vio- 
 lence and hatred are dreadfully familiar to the morbid mind ; 
 revenge takes the place of generosity and forgiveness. The 
 children are not only pun}-, weak, and imbecile, if any there be, 
 but short-lived and vicious besides. How can they be otherivise 
 when the heart of one parent is sad and broken, the other 
 
50 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 robbed by excess and bad babits, too faithfully followed, of 
 every generous impulse, having wasted its holy treasures, and 
 lost the capacity to feel affection ? The very sense of manhood 
 grows dull ; the soul never thrills with the power of great and 
 mighty thought ; the emotional and devotional nature dies out ; 
 tears are strangers to the eye — for the man who cannot weep is 
 lost! — and the rich garden of the human soul becomes trans- 
 formed into an arid wilderness of misery and woe ; and none 
 the less so because pride represses all external evidences 
 thereof. 
 
 Doubt it who may, it is none the less true, that from thought- 
 less error in the line here discussed, mainly, have sprung forth 
 the myriad hells at the hearth-stone which of late years have so 
 disgraced our nation and our age. Nor is that all ; because it 
 is a law of nature, impressed by the finger of the Eternal One, 
 that whoever disobeys the same must suffer the inevitable 
 penalty of the transgression, in deprivation of true happiness 
 and joy, if in no other way ; for the very soul becomes dwarfed, 
 crooked, angular, parts with all its finer, nobler, better feelings, 
 its brightest hopes and anticipations, and the fountains of 
 domestic bliss are transformed into well-springs of bitterness, 
 horror, self-reproach, remorse, unavailing and complete, 
 because the true fire has died out, and the baleful flames of 
 alcohol are too often substituted in . its place. Love ! The 
 meaning of the word is no longer known, for it sickened unto 
 haggardness and death, and then, on broken wing, flew baok to 
 Heaven, whence God had sent it aforetime to bless and happify 
 mankind. But now, murdered outright nearly, the spot where 
 holy flowers once bloomed has, under the reign of that single 
 error, become the play-ground of fierce, red passions whose 
 sport brings desolation — oh ! how terrible ! — to both sinner and 
 sinned against. 
 
 The office of the true teacher is, not to be silly, and harp 
 forever on the " fundamentals of science," or deliver oceans of 
 gabble about " basic principles," " positives, negatives, and 
 supercelestialized formative, subtending universological con- 
 glomerate," — tomfoolery, which no one can understand* and 
 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 51 
 
 few care about tiying to ; which accounts for so many works 
 on love, sexism, and the like, still pressing heavily the book- 
 sellers' shelves. But it is the duty of a teacher to so clearly 
 set forth even his most delicate meaning, as to be clearly 
 comprehended without shocking the reader's sense of refine- 
 ment ; thus, feeling the mission to be holy, he or she at once 
 appeals to human reason, and becomes an alleviator of human 
 ill, whatever be its character. 
 
 On the desk where this is written, lies — in a double sense! — 
 a recent work on marriage, the author of which opposes the 
 institution in toto, — partly on the ground that "the constitu- 
 tion of man enables him to perform and enjoy certain functions 
 of his sex at almost any time, and with almost any associate," 
 ergo he is justified in so doing ! Secondly, we are informed that 
 there are no marriages in heaven, consequently there should be 
 none on earth. Now, a sufficient answer to all such juvenile 
 twaddle and greens — for this "coming philosopher" is only 
 twenty-five ! — is, that Love seeks its own to hold and maintain, 
 and monogamic marriage, the constancy of each to the other, 
 is the expression of the divine idea, the builder-up of human 
 happiness ; while on the other hand, promiscuity is utterly 
 subversive of nobilit}^ of character and of eveiything else 
 elevating to human kind. If a stronger refutation of the 
 wretched absurdity is needed, it is found in the fact, that 
 nowhere within the pale of civilization has, can, or ever will 
 be found a sane, healthful, normal man who, loving a woman, 
 is either willing to share her favors with another man ; or is, or 
 can be, capable of so doing ; or who would not writhe in un- 
 speakable agony of soul at the bare idea, much less the actual 
 knowledge, that the woman thus loved had fallen from her 
 high estate, and granted to another man what belongs exclu- 
 sively to himself. It is said " belongs," for a man married to a 
 woman in love is a part of her, and she a part of him, else why 
 the fearful anguish to either when untoward circumstances tear 
 them asunder? Talk of death, torture, the rack ! Why, all this 
 may be borne with courage and fortitude ; but when you tear 
 a woman from him she loves, or a man from her he worships, 
 
52 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 then comes misery indeed, and woe unspeakable, and the 
 racked soul cries in agony, Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani ! My 
 God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ! Ah, the heart, the 
 heart, O woman of the gray blue eye, was an unknown land 
 in realitjr, till thou didst point it out to the thereunto blinded 
 soul ! taught it through the stern lesson of thy heartless double- 
 dealing, that love and passion are not sisters, but only cousins- 
 german ; that Love alone is capable of subduing and re- 
 moulding human life and character. Love ! Ah what a vast 
 and unsounded, unfathomed, unimagined eternity of meaning 
 lies hidden in the word ! What a world of bliss were ours were 
 that one word comprehended, and its holy laws obeyed ! Yet 
 they will be by and by. God is great ! 
 
 One God, one Religion, one Trust, one Love, — these are 
 sufficient to fill the measure of the grandest soul, but it often 
 requires a moral earthquake to lead us to that transcendant 
 discovery ; when we do we have reached the religion of Man- 
 hood ! 
 
 If we have our reason cool, and weigh things in the scales of 
 justice, we cannot help concluding that every gust of jealousy, 
 anger, suspicion, and bad passion of every sort, which occa- 
 sionally sweep over the best of us is, after all, but discipline, 
 intended by Him who placed us on the sea of apparent, but 
 not real, accident and circumstance, to subserve ends and uses 
 in the far-off future, hidden from us, but not from the Maker. 
 If we yield to them we lose ground in every sense ; the lower 
 nature rises to the surface, and the sun of man and womanhood 
 sinks beneath the sea. How criminal, then, are we who permit 
 these storms to mar the serenity of our immortal souls ; and 
 that, too, when we know full well that in the very moment 
 wherein we cry " God help us ! " God himself, with out- 
 stretched arm, is there, to succor and to save ! Whoever 
 depend upon their own strength for power to withstand temp- 
 tation, beat back the foes of their souls, and gain victories over 
 themselves, depend altogether upon broken reeds. There is a 
 God in heaven, and his power is abroad in the world, no matter 
 what crack-brained sophists may affirm to the contrary ; and 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 53 
 
 that divine power alone is able to render us strong for the right 
 and against the wrong ! Most of us have very powerful evil 
 tendencies to contend with, and we cannot do it single- 
 handed and alone. By reason of the mysterious action of the 
 law of hereditary descent, the best man or woman living is 
 liable, under certain peculiar conditions and excitements, to 
 break the restraining cords and startle their friends and the 
 world by a burst of temper which is, in other words, but a form 
 of positive insanitj^, which, if it do not rush him or her into 
 sudden crime, at least is very likely to create disagreements 
 and antipathies such as no subsequent repentance can atone 
 for. We are none of us so perfect but that there maj r come a 
 time wherein the bad of the foretime, the baleful poison handed 
 down from distant progenitors, may be awakened and ooze up 
 from the floors of our being, through some dark crevice or 
 cranny of our natures, left there when we were struck into 
 being. Now it is comparatively easy work to fight against 
 acquired bad habits, but when, in addition to our own, we have 
 to contend with another host of them transmitted to us from 
 two hundred years gone by, and which perhaps have been 
 silently gathering volume and force ever since, then indeed it 
 is up-hill work and no mistake ; and he or she who wins against 
 such odds is indeed heroic ! 
 
 Totally setting aside all theories and h}-potheses concerning 
 the absolute origin of the human soul itself, — whether it, like 
 the body it wears on earth for a longer or shorter period of 
 time, originates, springs into being in the first instance, at, or 
 shortly after, the point of time wherein the ph}'sical nucleus 
 finds a lodgment, and begins its wonderful growth and unfokl- 
 ment from gelatinous monad to full-fledged soulhood ; or 
 whether the immortal spark had a prior existence here or 
 elsewhere ; whether it is brought into being by the mingling 
 of elements furnished by each parent, or whether it exists as a 
 point in the brain of the male parent, and is subsequently 
 clothed upon by the dear mother ; certain it is, whether either 
 of them be the true solution of the mighty and involute mystery 
 or not, that its career on earth must be good, bad, better, or 
 
54 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 worse, in exact ratio and proportion as were, or are, the pro- 
 genitors just precedent to, and at the moment of the primary 
 office ; and also in accordance with their good or ill condition, 
 in all respects, during gestation, as well as for some years 
 thereafter. 
 
 It is generally held that the male parent has nothing what- 
 ever in any way to do with the formation of the character, or 
 plvysique of the child, from conception, till long after the new 
 being has been an inhabitant of the world. This, however, is 
 unquestionably a very grave error, and a very pernicious notion ; 
 and for many reasons ; among which are, first, the mother's 
 office is one of love, and she is almost wholly dependent upon 
 the father of her unborn child, during her entire maternal period, 
 for the store of true affection which it is her office to crystallize 
 in the babe she is giving to God and the world. Second, she 
 depends upon him for the intellectual stimulus essential to the 
 perfection of the brain of her babe ; and, third, she needs the 
 continued flow of strong vital electricity and magnetism of her 
 husband, to enable her to round out and fill up the nature, 
 body and character of the new heir ; and thus in a triple sense, 
 not to mention scores of others, does the male parent assist in 
 the formation of and rounding out of the physical, mental, 
 moral, ethical, electric, magnetic, and nervous system of their 
 offspring ; which offices can never be properly filled unless love 
 reigns lord of the household ! Deprived of these essentials to a 
 perfect maternity, the offspring must of necessity be lacking in 
 the prime elements, — be a one-sided halfness, and angular, from 
 the fact that it must, will, and does, receive impressions from 
 others, which impressions being fitful, changeful, kaleidoscopic, 
 necessarily make the child correspondently. But if the father 
 loves, and is near the mother, those impressions are prevented, 
 other influences barred out, and the child becomes in very deed 
 a well-spring of joy and pleasure in the home. 
 
 Eeason, nature, common sense, all sustain the position here 
 laid down, and proclaim the principle of this new discovery to 
 be of very truth itself. The points here set forth directly (and 
 there are scores of momentous suggestions connected therewith) 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 55 
 
 are too important to be hastily passed over ; for upon them, to 
 a far greater extent than is seen upon the surface, depends the 
 happiness or misery, not only of countless hosts now living and 
 playing their parts in the great drama of life and love, but also 
 upon them hinges the tremendous question whether our children 
 shall come into the world born thralls of vice, impulse, excite- 
 ment, and barbarism, ground into their very marrow, or enter 
 on the race of existence with calm temperaments, solid pbys- 
 iques, enduring brain and nervous force, and be bright and 
 shining lights in a world of thick moral fog and darkness ; 
 and this great question is one that each parent must put to 
 him or herself, and for the true verdict their own souls and 
 the Eternal Father will assuredly hold them responsible, 
 sooner or later, here or beyond the surging river. 
 
 In this connection comes up, naturally, the question " How?" 
 The answer is : husband, prospective father, a child is wealth ! — 
 wealth, sir ! richer than Golconda's mines, — and it is your first, 
 middle, and final duty to be patient, kind, affable, and all else 
 that you ought to be, in all the trifles of life and love and hus- 
 bandage and fatherhood ; for, after all, it is the trifles, so called, 
 that constitute the sum of existence, and make or mar human 
 happiness generally, but especially that of love and marriage 
 
 It is perhaps well, at this point, that reference should be made 
 to what no better appellation can be given than that of consti- 
 tutional vampirism ; hence, advantage is here taken of another 
 work from the same pen and brain, to quote therefrom : 
 [Dhoula Bel : or, the Magic Globe.] It is clearly demonstra- 
 ble that parents affect the fate or fortunes, the happiness or mis- 
 ery of the child before that child is born ; and so positively, too 
 that no subsequent training can wholly overcome the inherited 
 bias — no possible washing, thoroughly remove the stain. The 
 influences exerted upon the unborn will display themselves all 
 along that child's career from the cradle to the grave ; and the 
 satisfactory solution of the great problem of human evil is 
 easily found in that selfsame law of descent and transmitted 
 bias, aptitude and appetite. When evil rules openly or secretly, 
 whether of apparent choice or strong impulsion, derived from 
 
56 WOMAN, LOVEs AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 ancestry, there ensues a battle to the death between the Shadow 
 and the Light, in whosoever's soul and body the combatants are 
 pitted against each other. 
 
 Many a man has been jailed, state-prisoned, and even hung 
 upon gibbets, execrated of all mankind, not for his own sins, 
 but for those of his fathers before him ; and many a good 
 woman has fallen into adulterous practices, not of her own free 
 choice, but by reason of the sudden development of an over- 
 powering impulse, which, perhaps, took its rise a hundred years 
 before, at some stolen interview or love-passage of her progeni- 
 tors, and which, like the seeds of consumption, slept through 
 entire generations, and then leapt to life and frightful power 
 under some extraordinary condition in which she happened to 
 be placed ! It is well that man's judgment is not final ; and it 
 is sweet to think that God will hold us responsible for those sins 
 wholly our own, and not for thee razy, cranky, sick abnormali- 
 ties which we develop by reason of pressure, not of our own 
 creation. 
 
 Mankind are yet to learn that evil qualities and their fruitage 
 can only be permanently displaced by replacing them with good 
 ones handed down from parent to child all along the line of 
 years ; for the human race, like a turbid pond, can only settle 
 itself and become pure by the operation of forces alike resident 
 in each. Not until then will the world be better than it is 
 to-day ; for it is of no use for us to try to permanently improve 
 anything but our own characters, nature, tendencies and pro- 
 clivities. The human constitution, unlike those of states, can- 
 not be " resolved" into better conditions, nor be amended, even 
 by a " two-thirds rule." That grand consummation can only be 
 effected b3 r personal anabyses, elimination of the bad, substitu- 
 tion of the good, and persistent sticking to it, by the quicken- 
 ing aid of a cultivated conscience, and the strengthening power 
 of a normal will. It cannot be achieved by patent nostrums of the 
 pseudo-scientifico-philosophical schools, because these are, at 
 bottom, but very pretty moonshine, and just about as solid, only 
 a million times more injurious, because so specious as to 
 look like truth, when in fact they are but sugar-coated false- 
 
WOATAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. bl 
 
 hoods, whose kernels, like modern pills, are very aloetic, bitter, 
 nauseous, productive of moral consumption, affectional scrof- 
 ula, and heart cancers, wholly incurable, save by the sharp 
 knife of suffering and the invoked aid of the Omnipotent. 
 
 It is perhaps not strange that, look where you will, you will 
 find that the most rabid free-lovers are the most vehement God- 
 deniers ! and wherever 3-ou find one, you are sure to discover that 
 one hat covers both characters. During the past twenty years 
 there has arisen and flourished about forty socialistic maniacs 
 in this country, nearly all of them atheistic, and quite all bent 
 on destro}*ing marriage, inaugurating the good time coming by 
 making every man a contemptible human dog, and ever}' woman 
 a victim. Lunatics every one of them, with but one idea, and 
 that only half digested. Others of the ilk who rode, and still 
 ride, as hobbies, various so-called social-science schemes, reasoned 
 in circles, reached their views of truth by the reductio ad absur- 
 dum over the pons assinorum, — sheer impracticables, who caught 
 and used man}* a good man and woman, and, of course, 
 wrecked them soul and body ; for these fellows, many of whom 
 were spiritualists, of both genders, did, and still do, invite people 
 to go to heaven on the cars of morbid •• philosophy" as a name, 
 but shameless licentiousness as a practice. TTe are writing 
 by the card now, and hinting at, not telling, facts. Let the 
 defiance come, and the gauntlet will be instantly lifted ; because 
 at this end of twenty }'ears' knowledge of the whole radical move- 
 ment, the writer is unable to point to one of the various leaders 
 of it who was not either a knave, idiot, or insane, 3-et, operating 
 as a social force, these schemers, from the da}*s of Mountain Cove 
 to the Ohio villains and villany, spread desolation far and wide, 
 ruined families by thousands, made honest men dupes, turned 
 dupes into rogues, and, defying God, scattered the seeds of death 
 and hell broadcast over the fertile acres of the land ; and the 
 remnant of the wretches are doing it to-day, urged on by lust- 
 fires lighted at the lamps of Hell. Thank God, their day is 
 nearly closed, and common sense and decency are gradually 
 but effectually crushing out what little of life is left them. Out 
 of this class sprung mainly what is here intended to be dis- 
 
58 WOMAK, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 sected, — the destroying thing called Vampirism. If the dread- 
 ful dreams of these social reformers, these abrogators of mar- 
 riage, could — which, thank God, they cannot ! — be carried out 
 in general practice, civilization would not endure a century, but 
 grim gaunt chaos come again. Give such people full swing, 
 and, if they could, they would fling the Lord God off the uni- 
 versal throne, in their mad career of havoc and destruction, and 
 then, whirling all heaven across the abyss, hurtle the eternal 
 seraphs down to the yeasty deeps of nether space. But being 
 limited, they can only wreak their hatred of all good, by denying 
 his existence and desecrating his hoty image — humankind ; for 
 to them what is man but concentred lust, what woman but his 
 victim, what life but a field for passion's foul display? The 
 morbid host have concocted scores of patent panaceas for the 
 cure of all social ills, but who has ever been benefited thereby? 
 Riug out the inquiry upon the air, let it echo over all the earth, 
 let it swell upon the spaces, and reverberate from the ramparts 
 of heaven, Who? and the mournful echo will catch the sound 
 and fling it back in multitudinous waves, until sound itself shall 
 die exhausted, as the quick ear catches a sibilant Who? That 
 only. 
 
 Their dogmas are false ; their doctrines disastrous, freighted 
 with ten times more death than life, misery than happiness, vice 
 than virtue, weakness than strength ; with no religion, trust, 
 faith or charity whatever ; no social power, but only disruptive 
 forces ; no manhood, no womanhood, no good, no logic, but 
 plenty of flimsy sophistry, and not a spark of courage to meet 
 in fair encounter the champions of Religion, Virtue, Christ and 
 God ; — sneaking, lying poltroons at the head and foot of the 
 movement, out of the middle of which flows a corrupting stream, 
 a gulf of infamy on whose festering tide, born of moral fecu- 
 lence, which finally takes life and stalks about the world, — a 
 moving collocation and condensation of all unseemly unsightly, 
 ungodly things, and to which we are about to turn our atten- 
 tion. Its name is Vampirism ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 59 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Every gust of Ador-amatory, every gush of love exhausts 
 unless returned. The prolific cause of untold thousands of 
 wife-deaths springs from this fact ; for -where a wife goes out in 
 love, pure, tender, gentle and sweet, in these modern days, the 
 chances are five hundred to one but that she is misunderstood 
 and met with a different kind of fiery storm, heavily freighted 
 with death to her, and but poorly calculated to afford real joy 
 to him. 
 
 How long, O Lord, how long, will it be before all us who 
 hope we are, and believe we are, immortal beings, will learn the 
 first great lesson of immortality, and understand that union, 
 mutuality, reciprocal interchange of all kindly deeds and wishes 
 and offices, — one tune, one mission, one desire, one hope, 
 intent, aim, object, and purpose, — is the sole rule and law of 
 married love ! How long will it be before men discover that to 
 merely gain a shell is often to wholly lose the jewel ; but that 
 whoso wins the contents of the casket, the glittering gem, 
 wins casket and all, and more beside, more than will satisfjr 
 the largest hope ! Yet that lesson must be learned. 
 
 Passing wholly by the reformers, — Rapp, Owen, Compte, 
 Fourier and men of that grade, — all of whom left the world a 
 great deal purer and better than they found it ; even skipping 
 past Joe Smith, Ann Lee, and John H. Noyes, as persons who 
 had a good motive in their movements, and really believed their 
 own doctrines, we will pass at once to the lesser, and infinitely 
 more mischievous new lights, — the grain-devouring rodents of 
 society, — the pestiferous rats and mice of the social move- 
 ment, — men and women with some brains, but no moral pro- 
 portions whatever. Most of these came to the surface along 
 with modern spiritualism, diverged from it somewhat, and — 
 inspired by ambition to either figure or make an odor in the 
 world — they mainly, and triumphantly achieved the latter — 
 and a very unpleasant one it was. Doubtless among this flux 
 of Eolists, mountebanks, and moon-struck fanatics, there may 
 
60 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 have been one or two honestly believing themselves loftily in- 
 spired by divine ideas ; but all of them save one alone, the head-, 
 centre of the foul brigade, shall be nameless herein, because 
 their lucubrations are beneath contempt, as indeed are those of 
 nearly all other people of one idea. 
 
 Standing alone in his nasty glory was Andrews, the self- 
 styled "Pantarch" and free-lover general, who, while pretend- 
 ing to be a reformer, really knew as much about social science 
 as a long-eared jackass does of algebraic equations, yet had he 
 brains enough to gather not a few cracked-head, passion-driven 
 fools about him, all of whom considered rape and seduction a 
 fine art and justifiable, and hailed concubinage as lofty gospel. 
 But the theme is too vile for these pages, their creed too horri- 
 ble and disgusting. 
 
 These reasoners mistake worms in their brains for splendid 
 ideas, and their wrigglings for the grand movements of the vor- 
 tex of vortices, and morbid cogitations for profound thought. 
 Such men sometimes pride themselves upon their culture, and 
 fancy they are right, simply because they are not openly coarse 
 and brutal. A greater mistake was never made ; for the more 
 refined a man is, the more dangerous and cruel he becomes, if 
 his devotional or religious nature is in abeyance to his intellect- 
 ual and esthetic. 
 
 Passional vice in all its forms is carried to greater refine- 
 ments of abomination among the cultured than the plebeian 
 classes, for reasons self-apparent ; and the writer of this is 
 aware of wealthy wretches in New York and Boston, whose 
 passional crimes, and deep and damning perversions of the 
 instinct, are altogether too horrible and infamous to be men- 
 tioned, yet are actually true, as thousands can testify, if need 
 be, on solemn oath. Women, with deep shame be it said, are 
 not one whit behind the other sex. The whole springs from the 
 civilized corruption of qualities in themselves pure and good. 
 And society is to blame for them. 
 
 The best picture of Satan ever drawn, describes him as a pol 
 ished gentleman, of the Pantarchal type — exactly ! — the per 
 fection of intellectual power and aesthetic culture, art, refine- 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 61 
 
 tnent, taste, and all that marks the outside of the perfected civ- 
 ilizee, but wholly destitute of moral goodness or religious 
 devotion. And from writers of that mould has much of modern 
 social-science-literature, mainly come, — thinkers, some of them, 
 of rare ability, but who being all head, are as destitute of heart 
 as a school of fish are of black-boards and writing-books ! 
 
 These vermicular philosophers, in their haste and zeal to 
 upset society, and rebuild it on new plans, are incited thereto 
 mainly by their own diseased tastes, and resultant discontent, 
 and not by genuinely philanthropic motives ; because their cali- 
 bre is too small for universal, or even general, comprehension 
 of the real wants and rights of man. They either forget, or 
 purposely ignore, the fact that there are natural as well as 
 human laws underlyiug society ; and that its development pro- 
 ceeds from the operation of principles too deep for them alto- 
 gether. They are blind to the results of civilization ; that it 
 is not dependent upon • mere intellectualism ; for unless its 
 growth be religious and moral as well, its fruits are poisonous 
 and disastrous to mankind. In proof of which, if proof be 
 needed, see France ; ay, our own land ! 
 
 The social fabric is bulky and involute. It is builded slowly ; 
 and no one beam in the structure can be rudely displaced, — 
 marriage, for instance, — or reversed, by ballotizing every- 
 body, without weakening the entire edifice, and endangering all 
 its occupants ; for society is like a sea, with ebbs and flows, 
 action and reaction, and whatever disturbs one part is sure to 
 be disastrously felt by another. The fact is, society in its rise 
 from primitive savagery has eA r er moved slowly, but always 
 toward the higher and better, and despite occasional stoppages 
 and bloody impedimenta of war, and other cataclysmal ruin, it 
 never, in the long run, fails to surge and bend and turn and 
 trend in the right direction, — a direction, too, never decided by 
 human choice, but under an impulsion, which itself moulds all 
 human thought, choice, and desire, and develops, by mystical 
 means, the instruments of all human advancement, and in a 
 thousand directions simultaneously. A natural law which 
 never fails, as it operates, and moves the whole grand machine 
 
62 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 along its God-appointed track, to grind to powder everything 
 opposed to its healthful march and growth, Joe Smiths, Ann 
 Lees, Mahomets and "Pantarchs" included; and this is why 
 partial reforms and reformers, political cliques and parties, 
 church systems, and all specialties have ever and always failed, 
 and, save as they added a new element to the future, have come 
 to naught, from the days of the Greek, Eg}'ptian, Parthian and 
 Scythian commonwealths down to and including the Darke 
 Count}r, Ohio, and Mountain Cove Villanism, Spiritual Aga- 
 pemones, Brigham Young-dom and Berlin Heights. 
 
 The social machine naturally despises all tits, starts, periodi- 
 cal spasms, and personal governorship. It is never radical, but 
 always conservative. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does 
 society despise radical innovations of every hue and shape, no 
 matter how finely tricked off with a bright panoply of glittering 
 words, theories, and hypotheses ; it instinctively smells paste 
 where apparent diamonds shine, and while listening to fools 
 takes good care not to wholly follow their advice. 
 
 Society knows that neither radicals nor social amazons are 
 safe to tie to ; that they are never healthy, and that it is a good 
 thing to give them both the go-by. The author speaks from 
 bitter experience among both classes, and his verdict is, he 
 never found either a virtuous, sincere, truthful or honest radi- 
 cal in all his twenty-seven years' knowledge of them, for their 
 paths are very sinuous and their walk is " slantindicular." 
 They are born malcontents, opposed to everything and every- 
 body, diseased inside and out, and above all affectionally, for 
 they are passion-driven drivellers, unworthy of notice, and all 
 their teachings are pernicious. 
 
 When leaders set bad examples, erratic or erotic, what else 
 can be looked for than that those who swear by the same shib- 
 boleth will exhibit precisely the same phenomena? But it is 
 remarkable that when those very leaders come to see their 
 error and take the back track, they are seldom if ever followed 
 by even a corporal's guard ! Facile descensus averni, — but 
 hard to climb back into heaven ! 
 
 Thus it happens that all honest men and women, who by sad 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 63 
 
 « 
 
 experience have come to find out that they were deluded, 
 and when by suffering and the providence of God they have 
 been brought back face to face with truth again, have always 
 been berated, slandered, stigmatized, and hounded down 
 almost to the bitter death, by those who were once their 
 stanch upholders. For instance, take Spiritualism, Sweden- 
 borgianism, Universalism, and wherever a man or woman has 
 left their ranks, he or she has invariably been blackened in the 
 most " gorgeous style," and found to have always been villains, 
 rogues, and eveiything else bad and woful ; all of which comes 
 of course with sweet grace from lips eternally prating peace, 
 charity, and good-will, and prove their own truth by driving 
 men to the wall, women to prostitution, and innocent children 
 to beggary ! Have they really done this ? Yes ! The proof 
 is within sound of the writer's voice as he pens these lines ; 
 and yet at this moment many of these self-same people are 
 blaspheming God by mock praises and pyrotechnic prayers ; 
 succeed by what Mrs. Wood called the diuretic (meaning die- 
 tetic) philosophy, right afterwards, — all of which develops 
 another curious streak of human nature, and proves the major 
 proposition herein, that out of extremes and radicalisms 
 comes nothing good or sound, elevating, humanizing, or relig- 
 ious, but only unholiness, vituperation, malice, slander,, lust, 
 hatred, revenge, insanity, and unrest, to escape all of which the 
 best way is to let them severely alone. Steer clear of radical- 
 ism, but emphatically insist that your children shall, because 
 there's no real, but at best merely apparent good in it, what- 
 ever shape it takes, or stjde it goes by ; for, stripped of its 
 trappings, it is only another name for irreligion, religio-scientc- 
 philosophico prostitutions, of talent, soul, body, brains, and 
 morals ; and when laid bare by the scalpel of sound logic, it is 
 found to be full of cruelties, sophisms, and irrationalities of 
 every kind and degree, distasteful to healthy minds, but 
 delicious to the foul. 
 
 The insane maunderings of modern iconoclasts ; the mum- 
 blings of toothless old crones of vinegar aspect, who bawl and 
 howl against everything good and sensible ; the vapid chatter 
 
64 WOMAN, LOVE j AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 % 
 
 ings of pretty poll-parrot women's rightites, who mount the ros- 
 trum to show off their fine points and briug fools to their feet ; 
 and the hoarse gruntings of reformatory lunatics in broadcloth, 
 who ventilate bad English and worse morals from the same 
 platform, are on a par with madness ; are as little worthy of 
 an honest man's or virtuous woman's respect as are the maud- 
 lin dribblings from the brain of his salacious, pantarchical, 
 universological and sociological High Nastiness, Andrusius the 
 First. 
 
 The whole varied and complex tribe of would-be-State 
 builders, gravely tell us that not only is the Christian religion 
 powerless, effete, dead in effect, but that society is rapidly 
 going to decay ; just as if we believe such stuff, or that the 
 conserving hand of God was not visibly at work everywhere, 
 causing it to correct its own faults, often by severe measures,- 
 as war, revolution, and physical degeneracy ; through the 
 divine power of which agencies, fearful and terrible though they 
 be, violated law, moral, mental, social, physical, all find their 
 avengement, and gradually but surely restore the great world's 
 health again. 
 
 This vehement denunciation is not against individuals, save 
 only as they represent principles ; and before this task is done 
 the terrible cause will be seen, but not felt, as the writer's 
 heart has felt it ! God can only realize that bitterness ! — why 
 this terrible earnestness is levelled against systems foul and 
 Satanic, yet garbed in scientific cloaks. 
 
 These self-appointed world-regenerators, but really exponents 
 of disruptive notions, talk and write just as if there were no 
 God in existence, no retributive forces in being, no Providence 
 over, under and around the world ; and as if it was capable of 
 making mistakes, and the whole grand system of the universe a 
 definitive and radical failure, total, overwhelming, and complete. 
 They forget that we are in the middle of Time, with one eternity 
 behind us, and another right ahead, and whole clouds of eter- 
 nities dimly looming like vague, gray shadows in the immeasur- 
 able Beyond ! No ! There's no such thing as mistake or 
 failure in or about or to or from the overruling soul of Being ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 65 
 
 the infinite Lord of a myriad heavens, and the other myriads 
 of soul-bearing galaxies such as the eye sweeps in the vast blue 
 above our heads, and beneath our feet forever and forever ; and 
 he who affirms such a possibility even, is either demented or a 
 fool. 
 
 But, to argue a little further, suppose that society really is 
 unsound in many respects, and presents the appearance of de- 
 ca}-, is it so certain that these symptoms are the signs of dis- 
 solution? Is it not far more reasonable to conclude that these 
 very sigus are, in the bodies politic and social, just like others 
 in the human frame, when scrofula so taints its every fibre that 
 the system is deeply engaged in the depurative process, and 
 with all its> energies is rapidly and surely collecting all the bad 
 substance into a social ulcer or two, — the isms, ologies, new 
 lights, and their ists, — which only need deep pricking to let 
 the pus escape and leave the system cleaner, clearer, purer than 
 before ! 
 
 It seemed to the writer that the time had come wherein the 
 ultraists and ites, the ologists and ists, and the vampire tribes, 
 alike in the higher ranks of social life, as in the intellectual 
 cesspools of so-called godly and philosophic Boston, should no 
 longer have it all their own way. Boston, the Puritanic, where 
 girls imprisoned for the fearful crime of poverty have been sub- 
 jected to abuses by paid officials, as can be clearly proved in 
 open court, too dreadful to be readily believed of savages, 
 much less Christians. The testimony is at hand, and at last 
 " there's a chiel among 'em ta'in notes — and, faith, he'll prent 
 'em ! " That city, for its size, has been a young Sodom, clearly, 
 and most corrupt of any other under heaven ; for although there 
 is no plate within the domain of civilization where human life 
 is better, if so well protected ; no spot where actual, open 
 crime is so quickly run to earth, or a poor man has fairer play, 
 or outcast a better chance to return from her wanderings when 
 good men are in office, — yet there is no spot where bigotry and 
 prejudice rule with so strong a hand ; or where the laws of God 
 and man, so far as it regards the great social vices, are set so 
 wholly at defiance ; because the facilities for their infraction 
 
66 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 are greater than in any other place out of London. What is the 
 cause of it? Are Boston people worse that others in that re- 
 spect ? The reply is an emphatic No ! But it results in a great 
 degree from the natural protest against puritanic repression ; 
 from the strict class lines of its people, and from their wretched 
 restaurant-life, — for at least eight-tenths of her people seldom 
 know what a good square homeside meal is, but they gobble 
 their food in eating-houses as cattle do their hay at fodder- 
 time ; the consequence of which is that all Boston is dyspeptic ; 
 and whoever is dyspeptic does not care a straw about Moses 
 and his seventh commandment, which they glory then in 
 breaking ; but they delight in the last one, with the " not " 
 left out. Boston is peopled with two general classes, old and 
 not old ; both of which have added an additional item to the 
 decalogue, and strictly obey each its own. That of the not 
 old is, "Proceed during the period of juvenility, for when 
 senile comes it will bring a chronic inability along with it." 
 That of the other is shorter, and reads, " Get all you can, 
 and keep all you get." 
 
 The man or woman whose food is constantly manipulated by 
 hirelings, and partaken of with strangers, cannot be healthy in 
 any way ; for the food lacks the magnetism of home, love, and 
 domesticity. Restaurants make lechers of us all ! and that will 
 be a happy day when the last one burns up, and the last meal 
 is eaten at their tables by married men and women, or single 
 ones either. 
 
 Convinced of the inutility of attempting to force society into 
 new forms, modes, channels ; and that a natural growth will 
 bring things right eventually ; and that the mere social phase- 
 isms thereof are but temporary existences, destined, like pustules 
 on the human face, to pass away when the digestive apparatus 
 is all right, the author believes that, if the social and political 
 doctors will but let society alone, its disorders will be healed 
 and permanently cured for good by the grand Vis Medicatrix 
 Naturce; leaving perhaps a scar or two, but the radical poison 
 will have been extirpated thoroughly, because God and Nature, 
 
WOMANy LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 67 
 
 though sometimes apparently slow in movement, are neverthe- 
 less alwa\*s perfect in their grand and holy work. 
 
 The world, in its social, devotional, emotional, affectional, 
 and every other department, even when deathly sick, sensibly 
 and ever refuses to be experimented upon on a large scale or 
 for a long time, with or by any variety of patent nostrums or 
 new-fangled notions and medicaments. Each man in the long 
 run will be compelled to clean out his own Augean stables, 
 even if it takes twice as long as it did the fabled hero of an- 
 tiquity. But he alone — each for him or herself — must do it ; 
 and then, and not till then, will the world get better and be 
 permanently cured ; and that's the long and short of it ! 
 
 Woman ! Let's take a glance at a side of her always seen, 
 but seldom noticed, and scarce ever understood. There is in 
 all women a very great deal more than most people dream of, 
 and here is one strange thing : there are moments in her life, 
 fitful, flashful, evanescent as a passing dream, wherein Some- 
 thing awfully grand, deeply mysterious, fuller, higher, sublimer 
 than what most of us call love, beams forth, like a sunburst 
 through storm-rifted cloud-banks, from her eyes and features, — 
 a mystic gleam, revealing some new thing of the soul, — an 
 index to an enormous force and power, of her, within her, 
 whoever she be, — one class, vampires, excepted, — and telling 
 of a boundless ocean of angelism upborne on the floors of her 
 soul ! — a mystery too vast for the intellect to wholly unravel 
 or fairly grasp. For twenty odd years, in all lands, the writer 
 has observed this wondrous thing. He has seen it in the 
 spotless virgin in cold New Eugland, and on the burning sands 
 of Araby the blest. He has seen this Godxess flash out from 
 the dark orbs of an octoroon, — the passionate, angular daughter 
 of the South ; and from the cold, gray-blue eye of an icy blonde 
 beauty of Maine ; from the beaming face of the beautiful- 
 featured temptress and inan-slayer, — Laura Fair, — may God 
 forgive, in pity, for her great crime, and her fearful provocation 
 thereto ! It has been seen radiating from the black eyes of a 
 negress. It flashes from the face of the nun in prayer, and 
 
68 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 from the dying mother's features ; but oftenest is it seen for an 
 instant, and then it is off and awaj r again, in the face of her 
 in whose bosom an immortal soul is preparing to be born. 
 What is this strange something peculiar to women, occasionally 
 seen in men, but only in those whose woman-side is the strongest, 
 ■ — this mystic thing which all have seen, yet no one ever named? 
 Those in whom it is oftenest visible are ever the heartful, 
 angular, misunderstood, lonely, soulful, idolatrous, uneven, 
 moodful, capricious, wayward ones of the world. It most fre- 
 quently shows itself when love has lit up the eye, and then 
 the lowliest woman bears the stamp of queenliness, and while 
 the spell lasts is possessed of a nameless grace, and glides along 
 with the soul-subduing witchery of a magnetic summer cloud. 
 Then she floats in an atmosphere that is something more, yet 
 something less, then voluptuousness, for this wonderful and 
 strange magic never either inspires or seeks passion ; for it is 
 as wide apart from that as heaven is from earth, or manhood 
 from a libertine's soul ; and yet this strange something oftenest 
 appears when passion is at high tide. When that flashful 
 glimpse is on her, a woman — be she who or what circumstances 
 have made her, rich or poor, beautiful or homely, old or young, 
 black or fair — is simply celestial and divine ; for immortality, 
 beyond the wildest dream of rapper or tahleist, gleams forth 
 unmistakably ; and she who has it, or he who beholds it, can 
 no more doubt the hereafter of the seeing soul, or the seen, 
 than that one and one make two, according to human arithmetic. 
 He who beholds her then, and drinks in the subtile meaning 
 along with his seeing, cannot help realizing, perhaps for the 
 first time, that the object called woman is a great deal more 
 than mere physical gender implies. Women of the soulless 
 grade have already been alluded to, and will be again further 
 on ; but this divine thing, this celestial femininity in part or 
 wholly, is very seldom seen, found, or felt in them, save by 
 reflection shortly after they have sapped some one else of life 
 and soul, and then it flashes out for a second only. It shot 
 forth for just an instant from the eyes of La Blondette, as she 
 sat there by the bedside whither she had been drawn to see 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 69 
 
 him die — her victim ; for a moment the celestial nature gleamed 
 through the vampire eyes, brought to the surface by an instant 
 of pity, — for the man lay at the point of death ; but God said, 
 " Die not yet ! " and so balked her of her prey ; whereat the 
 dvine thing went back to heaven, and the leech again swam 
 in her own dark, turbid pool. 
 
 Speaking of vampirism, — is it not rather singular that soul- 
 leeches are never, or exceedingly seldom, found, except among 
 the radical types and grades of society ? The writer has met 
 scores of them, but never anywhere else save among the " Re- 
 formers," " Women's Righters," " Pantarchians," and among a 
 certain class of so-called, but falsely called, " Spiritualists, " — 
 falsety so-called on the ground that being born in a stable fails 
 to make a man a horse, and so-called, simply because, happening 
 to believe in certain strange things, they call themselves spirit- 
 ual, when analysis demonstrates them to be wholly material, sen 
 sual, sensuous, non-spiritual, and altogether of the earth,earthy. 
 
 There are thousands of such abnormal beings in existence, 
 most of them in America, and very nearly all in the radical 
 ranks, persons of either sex and no sex, who sap, vitiate, and 
 drain out the life and vital nerve-energy of others ; and con- 
 tact with whom leads many a one to imagine they love and are 
 loved in return, when in sober fact all such are the pitiable vic- 
 tims of a very devil-spell, and stand, body, health, spirit, 
 morals, and soul, upon the toppling verge of a precipice, to fall 
 into which is ruin greater than aught which can otherwise befall 
 a rational human being. May the God of Heaven succor and 
 save all such, — and there are thousands of them, both within 
 and without the pale of marriage, so-called. 
 
 The terms basilisk, vampire, evil eye (mal occhio), jettatura 
 and ghoul, of Eastern story, are convertible terms, and were 
 intended to denote what is now being herein held up before the 
 world, in the hope of putting people on their guard against the 
 most dreadful and terrible counterfeit of love known on earth ; 
 and which is as far worse than its exfreme opposite as is a 
 deliberate murder worse than a school-boy's quarrel. There is 
 no moment in the entire life of such a person, when the heart 
 
70 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 pulses 'with generous feeling, or the eye is lit up with love. 
 Instead of that there is a short, sharp, quick, piercing glance, 
 which once seen can never be forgotten, because it fangs the 
 very soul of its victim, and leaves a sting which only time and 
 a genuine love, in fair, open, manly marriage, can ever heal. 
 But we have not yet done with this fearful thing, which, by the 
 way, will never wholly die out while the outreisms of modern 
 society, the entire family of radicalisms and ologies, maintain 
 a footing in the world. 
 
 The true woman is ever one of feeling ; ghouls have none, 
 save for themselves, and only weep and lament when they no 
 longer have hearts to feed on and destroy. But a genuine 
 ■woman, on the contrary, is never so blessed and happy as when 
 ministering to the joy and good of another. And although 
 such an one may plod along unappreciated, yet there are 
 moments when she feels her divinity, her royalty of soul, and it 
 flashes out upon the gaze of others when neither expects and 
 one knows not, and the observer is startled and astounded by 
 the sublime revelation. 
 
 "When a true woman's soul is up, when it gazes out from its 
 fleshly prison-house, when its divine fire is shot forth from her 
 luminous, loving orbs, disarming passion, and waking a train 
 of better and lofty thought, feeling, and emotion, then, ah, then, 
 there is something felt and seen by the observer which is 
 instinctively recognized and acknowledged to be very close akin 
 to absolute power and divinity ; for it is more than magnetism, 
 more than beauty ; for beauty takes the senses captive, but this 
 illumination unhinges the senses and goes through their gate- 
 ways directly to the soul of the observer, and there tells his 
 inner spirit that this is true womanhood ! — an abused word, but 
 whose real meaning is grandeur, dignity, friendship, affection, 
 tenderness, trust, faith, and love ; differing, indeed, from either, 
 but embracing the essence of them all combined. The woman 
 loves, the vampire preys, and the only common property of them 
 both is, not sex, but its mere semblance, its external symbol- 
 ism ; because no ghoul can be, in reality, a woman. 
 
 The wide-spread, but almost wholly-unsuspected, prevalence 
 
JTO.VAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 71 
 
 of vampirism accounts for the ruin and havoc, and domestic 
 heavens transformed into social hells, which invariably follow- 
 in the wake of most professional reformers, particularly of the 
 mediumistic class, very few of whom are healthful in any sense 
 whatever, and the vast mass of whom are not merely one-sided, 
 crooked, angular, but morbid and badly demoralized affection- 
 ally. Scores upon scores of thousands of families have been 
 broken, husbands lured to infamy and home-desertion, wives 
 to utter ruin and abandonment, by the flood and raff of re- 
 formers with a mission, who in these days scour every nook and 
 corner of the land. "What else can be looked for from a horde 
 of fanatics who have no God to lean upon, draw inspiration 
 from, or look up to? — people who have no conscience to 
 accuse, no sense of honor to uphold, no real heart to love ; who 
 live on excitements and fatten on the nervous, magnetic, and 
 affectional lives of all who enter their pestilent presence, or 
 breathe the devil-essence, the exuviae of the nether pit, — if 
 there be one — evolved from their entire personalities, physi- 
 cal, social, mental — people who can love only as jackals and 
 hyenas love their prey. 
 
 A true woman, before she is contaminated and demoralized 
 by current radicalism, is capable of, and to be happy, must 
 love ; but such love ! Not your rose-colored, mawkish, Miss 
 Nancified, kid-gloved, fair-weather affection, so commonly met 
 with everywhere except on the stage or in novels, — but she is 
 equal to one to be found when wanted, and which sticks. 
 
 Three days before the tragic ending, La Blondette wrote, or 
 quoted, to the writer hereof, — who thanked God his fate was 
 not sealed by marriage : — 
 
 *' Then, come the foul weather, come sleet or come snow, 
 We will stand by each other, — however it blow ! " 
 
 And. reader, would you believe it? — the man who wrote this 
 book was fool enough to swallow that as Cupid's gospel, with- 
 out the slightest valid reason therefor. Blind ! did you say ? 
 Yes, — as a bat ; but then that very blindness resulted in eye 
 
72 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 opening ; and the book in your hands ! That's how things are 
 balanced, and good comes of evil. 
 
 How blind we are to the providences bending over us ! What 
 grand results often spring from what looked like merest acci- 
 dent ! The fates or fortunes, not only of individuals, but 
 States and empires, often hinge and turn upon the merest 
 trifles in appearance. It may prove, and often does, that a 
 love-grief or sorrow may turn out to be the changing tide in a 
 new career. Never doubt till the end comes ; for misery and 
 grief are often sent to test what sort of material underlies our 
 character. No woman or man is fairly dead till quite ready to 
 be buried ; and when a love grief takes hold of a person to the 
 extent of suggesting despair or suicide, the chances are just 
 about three hundred millions to one, that it is a vampire spell, 
 easily thrown off by a resolute will, and wholly gotten rid of 
 inside of forty days from date ! 
 
 Extremisms, absurdities, and radicalisms all belong to one 
 catalogue, and all alike lay violent hands upon the soul's integ- 
 rity to itself and its divine Master. Rum-intoxicants destroy 
 the soul through bodily channels, and over appetital bridges ; 
 and so does vampirism, and the entire ungodly host which 
 marshal themselves under the banner of social reform ; not 
 always, but as a general thing. All but straight roads of life 
 and philosophy are unsafe paths to follow ; and all loves but the 
 home loves are dangerous to mankind ; and though outreisms 
 are very pretty to look at on paper, or to be listened to from 
 rostra, yet they are explosive bombs, charged with ingredients 
 fresh from the pit, — if pit there be, and things look as if 
 there were. The only perfect insurance against disaster con- 
 sists in keeping clear of their respective lines of operation. 
 
 It has hereinbefore been repeatedly said that all true women 
 are capable of loving deeply, enduringly, and well ; but, on the 
 other side, it is equally notorious and true, that men very rarely, 
 in these rapid days, possess the power to evoke, kindle, or call 
 out, the true, deep love that dwells in every normal woman's 
 heart, where it slumbers uneasily, and longs to be awakened. 
 Instead of so arousing it, the majority of men are finished 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 73 
 
 adepts in the art of, and almost invariably succeed splendidly 
 in, so thoroughly chloroforming it, that the poor, dear love goes 
 to sleep for good and all, never to be awakened this side the 
 grave ; and then they wonder what's the reason why, and utterly 
 fail to see that the fault is in themselves, and do not even 
 dream of the wonderful meaning of the word "Woman, nor that 
 to call her out and make her all she is capable of becoming, 
 three things are necessary, Love, Wifehood, in the true, full 
 sense, embracing trust, confidence, respect, appreciation ; and, 
 to crown the series, Motherhood, resulting from the combina- 
 tion of them all. 
 
 Picture such a woman standing before you in all the radiant 
 majesty of her nature ; but measure not her boundless, limit- 
 less, unfathomable ocean of genuine feeling, and giving ability 
 and power, by the standai'd, or in the petty heart-measures of 
 peach-cheeked, carnationed sentimentalisms now in vogue ; for 
 she and her heart require larger, fuller methods for the determi- 
 nation of real values. A woman's soul is a lake of fervent 
 water, heated by the breath of the Infinite, ready to flow forth, 
 and wash white and pure the blackest, foulest, spirit of man, if 
 he will but permit the holy baptism. On the other hand, the lurid 
 flames which ceaselessly burn and fret within the soul of the 
 loveless, unloving, yet love-hungry human- leech, is a consuming 
 death, capable and efficient to ruin the best and purest man on 
 earth, between the birth and fulling of a single moon, as it 
 hangs out, first a line, then a shield of silver, in the sky. 
 
 Some wives and some husbands are nervous leeches to each 
 other ! Such marriages are very prolific of consumptions, heart- 
 disease, vice, infidelity, drunkenness, ether-using, opium-eating, 
 jails, assaults, elopements, divorces, slander, early death, and 
 sometimes state-prisons, murder and the gallows. The question 
 arises here, however, When such unions exist, such results not 
 having been foreseen, is there any method of averting any item, 
 or all, the evils in the catalogue? Reply, Most assuredly! It 
 has already been given, and will be repeated in another chap- 
 ter, if that is not clear enough. 
 
74 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ATTRACTION : CAUSES, EFFECTS, CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 There is in certain persons of peculiar organization, a kind 
 of magnetic attraction, strange, weird, almost undefinable, yet 
 though it is a broad, deep river, its original spring or source is a 
 very tiny point. This singular attraction, exerted by persons 
 of both sexes alike, but more frequently by women of particu- 
 lar mould and make-up, has neither love, friendship, nor passion 
 as a basis or fulcrum for the exhibition of its energy or power, 
 yet is frequently attributed to either and all, while in reality it 
 is far different from, yet immensely stronger than, any one of 
 them, or than the entire combination of the three, as the three 
 generally exist. 
 
 It seems a marvel that a discoveiy so vast as the above lines 
 imply, — and those which follow will demonstrate, — should 
 not have been made long ago by some of the millions of people 
 who have written, said, or sung, the interminable, yet ever 
 fresh, story of love and its wonderful mysteries. They were 
 not thorough analysts, else had it not been left for the present 
 writer to call attention to a very remarkable series of facts con- 
 nected with the subjects under discussion. 
 
 This power, of a semi-magnetic character, to which attention 
 is here called, is deeper, higher, broader, and far more mysteri- 
 ous than what is usually known as love ; for love invariably 
 draws its object toward itself; or, at least, it tries to, that be- 
 ing its nature, albeit it does not always achieve success. But 
 the power here tried to be defined is both strange and peculiar, 
 because passionless, yet the soul of passion, by which is meant 
 soul-passion, not material incandescence ; for while it attracts 
 its own gender, it also draws persons of the opposite sex, 
 intensely, yet at the self-same moment exerts a positive repel- 
 lant energy, and keeps the attracted one from approaching too 
 near, save to worship and adore. 
 
 All truth is dogmatic and self-assertive, no matter what be 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. lb 
 
 its nature, character, or form ; and the truth here announced, 
 although for the next century it may defy analysis, and all man- 
 kind may proA'e unequal to the task of giving an adequate or 
 satisfactory reason why ; 3'et is so clear cut, is so much a part 
 of almost every one's experience, as to be at once accepted as 
 being real ; for there are but few persons of either sex, past the 
 jouissant period of } T outh, wherein there's never a time for close 
 observation or solid thought, but who have had abundant cause 
 in their own personal experience, to corroborate what is here 
 said upon this most wonderful and deeply mysterious working 
 of the human .soul ; and to recognize the existence of, if unable 
 to give a name to, that strange mode or mood of the soul now 
 under discussion, if not dissection. The power alluded to is 
 real and positive, and its influence is felt by all people, and 
 everywhere. It holds them spellbound at distances propor- 
 tional to the amount of soul in the attracted individual ; just 
 as planets are in the solar world. Some persons, of either sex, 
 in whom a plus of soul exists, when heart-reft and lonely, as all 
 such are extremely likely to be from the very great difficulty of 
 finding suitable or equal mates, or anj^thing like just apprecia- 
 tion, very often, and periodically, have sunbursts of vehement 
 love ; and during such periods, exert, ever unawares, an 
 attractive fascination, almost awful in its intensity, upon who- 
 ever of appreciative grade becomes embalmed within their then 
 quite magic sphere. But — and here is the grand and broad dis- 
 tinction between what we are now studying, and the fearful 
 vampire spell already alluded to, and to be further explained ; 
 for no one ever suffers, or becomes gross or wretched under the 
 influence of the former ; while whoever falls beneath the latter 
 invariably inhales the spores of the deeps, and becomes demor- 
 alized in exact ratio with the amount of the pestilent magnet- 
 ism they have imbibed. 
 
 One leads to self-restraint, virtue, goodness, God, and 
 heaven ; the other to total abandonment, passione, volupty, 
 angularity, hardness, grossness, moral death, and stultifica 
 tion. 
 
 Reader, a question or two : Have you never been in company 
 
76 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 with those for whom, at first, you had no especial liking, or 
 regard, yet whom, after a brief acquaintance, and having 
 caught the strange unearthly flash, described erewhile, you 
 were compelled to — love? — no, not that, for as times go 
 the thing passing by that holy name smacks more of earth than 
 heaven ! — but to whom you looked longingly, and clung to 
 with something deeper, broader, fuller, more mystical, and 
 apparently more dangerous than love, in spite of yourself? 
 Ay, and which continued to move and grow upon you whether 
 you would or not, — not as an infatuation of the leech grade, 
 but as a deep emotion, almost devotional, because clear, clean, 
 white, pure, unsullied ; having nothing of fiery passion, lurid 
 ardor, morbid, and charged with falsehood, flanked by jealousy 
 on one side, and gaunt murder on the other. Have you not 
 felt this better something sinking — a flood of wondrous life — to 
 the very floors of your being, and kindling theretofore slumbering 
 aspirations to reach higher and go farther? making you con- 
 scious of strange and mighty possibilities of achievement on 
 your part, never even vaguely dreamed of before ? — possibili- 
 ties of joy, love, devotion, thought, act, faith, and trust, there- 
 tofore soundly slumbering deeply in the far-off crypts and 
 dormitories of your soul? Have you not felt all this, even 
 when strict analysis on your part failed to enable you to 
 discover any satisfactory cause for the feeling, or any qualities, 
 abstract or concrete, in the individual thus inspiring you, 
 reasonably capable of producing such effects? Well, this 
 something is soul touching your soul without the intervention 
 of flesh, contact, sound, or magnetism. It is wholly Soul ! 
 The inspiration is divine, and a union between one capable of 
 inspiring, and one able to appreciate and return it, is celestial, 
 heavenly, of the gods, godly, and just what the Maker intended 
 all souls should feel before, during the continuance on earth 
 of, and when rejoined above in a still more holy and intimate 
 marriage. This is the love which angels feel and entertain, 
 and so may we here on earth, every one of us, if we but fairly 
 try to have it so. But this sort of marriage will never be 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MAIiRIAGE. 77 
 
 realized so long as we are content to float on the belly of the 
 air, our heads not touching heaven, our feet away from earth! 
 
 Men, however, have first to learn that she gives little who 
 only gives her form ; and women will be compelled to act on 
 the principle that howsoever beautiful the casket may be, it 
 sinks to insignificance in point of value when compared with 
 the jewel it contains. Of course this knowledge is the exact 
 reverse of what is learned to-day ; but when it obtains, horror 
 will disappear, and gladness take its place in every household ; 
 because the one only and true principle — Pure Love — will be 
 enshrined in every human heart. 
 
 As things are now, man}" a bride goes to the altar leaving 
 her heart behind her ; and many a bridal couch is pressed by 
 the lithe form, and form only, of her who has just spoken the 
 irrevocable words, but whose soul is far, very far away, and 
 proposes to stay ; and as times go — a not altogether unwise 
 determination, yet the conditions are very sad. 
 
 Husbands are not always blind or callous ; for though a 
 wife may conceal her wretchedness or inner dislike of her con- 
 dition for a while, yet even the grossest man, who after all 
 values mind more than matter, will find it out in time. 
 Generally men have themselves to blame for such a state of 
 affairs, and find it hard to bear. But if it is hard for them, 
 what must it be for the woman? Tliink of that, reader, think of 
 that! 
 
 When shall we three meet again? — that is, husband, wife 
 and love — is often thought as the twain enter the room where 
 each is to call and be the other's own ; and if fine ears could 
 catch the answer, the sound would strikingly resemble the sad 
 word Never I 
 
 As Heaven intended us all for joy, and gave us the elements 
 of being happj^ it is to a great extent our own fault if we fail 
 to reach the shining shore. The reason is that we find it much 
 easier to run down hill to Hades, than to climb a little toward 
 the table-lands of Heaven. 
 
 No diamond without its resemblant paste, no light without 
 
78 WOMAK, LOVE, AKD MARRIAGE. 
 
 a shadow, no joy without a horror, and, true to the rule, there 
 is more than one dreadful counterfeit of the perfectly holy 
 thing just tried to be described, the angelic, or rather the truly 
 human affectione. Let the portrait of oue of the most fearful 
 and devastating counterfeits of them all here be painted : 
 Reader, have you never encountered pale, thin-lipped, strange- 
 eyed, singular-looking, mysterious, semi-silent, reticent, yet 
 periodically loquacious, eat-you-up-ish persons, — females of the 
 outre stamp mainly, who possessed a certain positive, yet 
 nameless, but fathomless quality, not merely of physique, 
 mood, manner, gifts, or acomplishments, but all of them and 
 something more beside, differing from them all? — people with 
 curious gait, peculiar eyes, and very strange, disturbing, sense- 
 enthralling glances from those weird and terrible eyes, — her 
 eyes, — the eyes of Herodias, — she who asked for the Baptist's 
 head in a charger, as she made merry before the king, and 
 for which, the legend tells us, Christ commanded her to walk 
 the earth till he came again ; just as he sentenced the Jew 
 Ahasuerus, to the same penalty for a like offence against the 
 Master, as hers was against his best beloved, John, — peerless, 
 lovable, thrice-blessed John ! and the one went east and the 
 other west, and once in a century they met, and where they 
 met cholera and famine, plague and fire, devastated the homes 
 of men, and as man} r thousands perished as they had hairs in 
 their heads ! — eyes like Herodias' ej'es, longing for your life- 
 blood ! — eyes which look you through, cut, cleave, carve, 
 mercilessly divide you, lacerate, yet, strange to say, at the 
 same time, confuse, soften, melt, charm, fascinate, bind, and 
 chain your very spirit, and, despite your struggles, take you, 
 sense and senses too, captive before you fairly know your 
 real danger ; for they put the will to sleep, and soon you are in 
 a sweetly delicious, but terrible thraldom ! If you have not 
 had such an experience, you have not attended many of the 
 sorosis and other world-renewing conclaves of the sober sisters, 
 nor the " circles " " seances " and conversational levees, held 
 everywhere in these days by the multiform and myriad mem- 
 bers of the Circean sisterhood ; women in appearance only, 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 79 
 
 but in reality, many of them, conscienceless soul-leeches, who 
 deplete, exhaust, demoralize, and render gross, loose, and 
 desperate, any and every one who approaches near and remains 
 long enough to be saturated with the hadean aura perpetually 
 evolved from them. There, is, however, one consolation, — vam- 
 pires seldom live long, for Nature herself, repentant of her parent- 
 age of such beings, decrees them but a limited period wherein to 
 revolve in earthly orbits, and then, in pity, removes them bevcnd 
 the veil, to where their abnormalities can be corrected, because 
 there is nothing for them to feed on over there. True, we are told 
 that such beings, uneasy still beyond the grave, return to earth 
 and fasten upon innumerable victims here ; but then, if this be so, 
 we have a sure protection in prayer and will, inspired by faith 
 in God, able to shield us from all such envenomed attacks ; and 
 moreover, it is a singular fact, that within the pale of the Chris- 
 tian church even such are powerless, and they can only fasten 
 upon those, who, moving in a morbid sphere of life, breathing 
 sickly mental air, are already tinctured and tainted with the 
 poison, and thus attract such leeches just as carrion does the 
 far-off buzzards of southern lands. It may be set down as 
 absolutely certain, that only where inviting pastures are will 
 these harpies from the hells upon the other side come trooping, 
 rushing, flying, to sate their baleful greed, and quench a thirst 
 born with them, because the mothers who brought them into 
 being vainly yearned and longed for love, affection, something 
 to appease the deathless thirst that consumed them while bear- 
 ing the child, whose whole nature thus, in consequence, became 
 warped for lack of what every mother absolutely needs, and 
 without which both she and her babe are rendered wretched 
 and desolate indeed. 
 
 Every human being is the exact expression of the conditions 
 existent when the}- were called into existence. 
 
 At this point it may as well be stated that it is notorious, that 
 wherever you find a radical religionist, society-builder, pseudo- 
 reformatory philosopher, extreme political regenerationist, free- 
 lover, passional attractionist, pseudo and self-styled spiritual 
 mediums, iconoclasts generally, and especially brawlers against 
 
80 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 marriage, for divorce, and new-fangled, half-digested schemes 
 of social reform, you will find every one of them to be one- 
 sided ; high, but narrow-headed ; uneven ; angular ; dyspeptic ; 
 passion-ridden impracticables ; fungi of the mental world ; half 
 men, half women, whose very organizations prove them the 
 offspring of parents about whom there floated an atmosphere 
 of some sort of wroug, misery, warpedness, unrest, wretched- 
 ness ; and their children are living proofs that they were badly 
 gestated, and worse brought forth ; because no normal, sane, 
 mentally equilibrated man or woman ever exhibits the sharp 
 corners these people do, and who are ever full of caprice, 
 quirks, turns, inconsistencies, — now this, then that, and noth- 
 ing long, — unenduring in any direction, save in the chronic 
 discontent which is a part of their very nature, and the legiti- 
 mate expression of their parents' states before themselves 
 came to the world, not by any means to make it better, or to 
 bless, but to upset and drive it mad and wild; by their persever- 
 ing but futile efforts to improve what only God can make better 
 in his own good time, and own grand way. 
 
 That the absence of love at home is the cause of all the ter- 
 rible evils that afflict society, is a very painful, but solemn 
 truth. It may not appear so upon a cursory and superficial 
 view ; but in the final analysis will incontestably demonstrate 
 itself. If every man loved his wife and children, and every 
 wife her husband and famity, there would exhale from the body 
 politic a divine aura, — an atmosphere of goodness, love, truth, 
 and purity, in which it were an utter impossibility for hatred, 
 lust, gambling, drinking, anger, cheating, lying, slander, or 
 any other bad thing, to exist ; simply because there would be 
 nothing for them to feed upon. 
 
 God rules the world, and Chance has no hand in the matter at 
 all ; and ignorance of his laws occasions all the marital discord 
 on the planet ; hence it is because woman's true nature and 
 demands are not comprehended or appreciated by either herself 
 or the male world, that evil exists everywhere as the qualita- 
 tive and quantitative expression of exact conditions obtaining 
 in her life and world. 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 81 
 
 Various so-called remedies have been concocted and put 
 forth for this universal bad state of things, for instance, Free 
 homesteads, Woman's rights, Suffrage, Office-holding, New 
 religions, and ten thousand things beside, all just about as 
 effective in reality as the pope's bull against the comet, simply 
 because wholly unnatural. 
 
 A woman whose heart is full of love, and whose love 
 is returned, is contented, and can no more go gadding 
 about preaching impossible doctrines than she could deliber- 
 ately strangle the babe of her bosom. Of course it need not 
 be here repeated that actual love, being all a woman requires, 
 is not merely the cure of evils resulting from the reaction of 
 morbid states of mind upon her body, which reactions pass by 
 innumerable high-sounding Latin names, — is not only the 
 cure for, but preventive of diseases of all sorts now in the 
 world. If more women were like Mary, there were more 
 Christ-like men in the world ; for as the mothers mould the 
 children, the exhibitions of perversion in the world show how 
 very imperfectly she at present does her work. A good deal 
 of these bad results spring from the mutual humbug of the 
 wooing days ; for it often happens that the love which touched 
 two hundred degrees three weeks before marriage, sinks below 
 zero six months afterwards, — when the fine, sharp, keen edge is 
 worn off; and unless the man, but especially the woman, takes 
 special pains to rebuild the fallen edifice, lasting ruin is sure to 
 mark their wedded life thenceforth. Humbug reigns, yet need 
 not, for there's as much love in existence to-day as on that 
 glad morn when the morning stars sang together for joy, and 
 the sons of God were made joyful. The fact is, four-fifths of 
 the women in the world to-day, married and single, are actually 
 love-starved, and dying for what is either wasted, perverted, or 
 wholly smothered. 
 
 As a provisional step toward a true state of things, there is 
 no good reason why a woman should not express her preference 
 and love, as well as a man ; for as things are now, it is very 
 often Hobson's choice with them, — a piece of a man, or none 
 at all. Woman has now but a slim chance of happiness, oi 
 6 
 
82 WOMAN, LOVE, AND M ARM AGE. 
 
 even to develop her better, higher, nobler, deeper, and more 
 delicate and feminine character, because the tendency of the 
 ages has hitherto been toward masculinity in all directions ; 
 hence she must move with the current, or not at all. 
 
 But whosoever says that man is wholly to blame for the actual 
 condition of the great majority of women is a fool ; as well as 
 he who should assert that she herself, individually and collec- 
 tively, is not at fault. Go out in our streets any grand gala 
 day, like July 4th, and look squarely in the faces of the thou- 
 sands of women and girls you meet, as they come swarming 
 into town, and not in one face out of fifty you meet, will you 
 detect the slightest trace of thought, thought-power, genuine 
 ideal woman or girlhood ; but, on the contrary, a dead level of 
 mediocre commonplace, — a frippery and childish abandon, 
 from which it is hopeless to expect anything higher than gossip 
 and gabble. This criticism may be harsh, but it is just ; for not 
 in over one face in a thousand will you see the lines of a 
 marked and distinct character. If, then, woman will not 
 improve what chance she has, with what justice can she expect 
 her cause to be championed? Let her avail herself of her 
 undoubted opportunities, and demonstrate her desire to stand 
 on the place she craves and ought to occupy, and no power on 
 the globe can keep her from it, and indeed none will seriously 
 try to. The fact is, both sides, both sexes, are faulty, — woman 
 for not being what she might, and man for expecting too much 
 from her in view of the chances he has given her and she has 
 improved. The majority of women are mere mechanical 
 puppets, moved by springs. They will not think, but persist 
 in moving on the prairie lands and dead levels. of the exceed- 
 ingly commonplace. Of course there are exceptions, but 
 exceptions do not make human society, the people, the world, 
 or build a nation's greatness. It is in the great mass of women 
 we require to instil loftier ideas of their nature and destiny ; 
 it is the school-girl whom we need to cultivate ; and it is the 
 mothers, sisters, wives, of the " huge-paws " and commonality 
 whom we want to raise ; and not your he-she-gabblers ; nor 
 your polished treader on velvet carpets ; for one good country 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 83 
 
 girl or sewing maid, for the world's practical uses, is worth 
 five hundred such. "We must go to work there if we would 
 succeed, — ay, and lower still, — and rescue the millions now in 
 the broad maw of ruin, and in saving them teach the lessons 
 of labor, love, and sweet charity, and instead of cursing the 
 poor wanton by the wayside, save her if possible, for she may 
 yet mother heroes ; but if we cannot save her, then let us arm 
 ourselves with good-will toward her, and in the true Christian 
 spirit say, as say these lines, — blessed lines ! — 
 
 " Where'er her troubled path may he, 
 
 The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 
 The outward, wayward life we see, 
 
 The hidden spring we may not know. 
 Nor is it given us to discern 
 
 What threads the fatal sisters spun ; 
 
 Through what ancestral years has run 
 
 The sorrow with the woman born ; 
 What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
 What set her feet in solitudes, 
 
 And held the love within her mute ; 
 What mingled madness in the blood, 
 
 A lifelong discord and annoy, 
 
 Water of tears with oil of joy, 
 And hid within the folded bud 
 
 Perversities of flower and fruit. 
 It is not ours to separate 
 The tangled skin of will and fate, 
 To show that metes and bounds shall stand 
 
 Upon the soul's debatable land, 
 And between choice and providence 
 Divide the circle of events : 
 
 But He who knows our frame is just, 
 Merciful, and compassionate, 
 And full of sweet assurances, 
 And hope for all the langnage, 
 
 That He remembered we are dust ! " 
 
 Let us take a case of vampirism, — -as it actually occurred, — 
 and thus show how it works, and what its effects are, to the end 
 of saving those from ruin, who may hereafter suffer attacks from 
 
S4 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 that Mephistean source. Given to start with, a meeting 
 between the female ghoul and her intended prey, — for let it be 
 known vampires always plan their raids and conquests ; while 
 people never fall in love on purpose, — for love is the flame 
 kindled either instantly, at first sight, or is gradually, imper- 
 ceptibly grown into. Well, in less than twenty minutes after 
 they twain have met, he has become completely fascinated and is 
 affectionally wholly absorbed by her ; thinks her more than 
 celestial, divine, adorable, and thenceforth is only at ease when 
 she is the sole subject and object of his thought ; and he pines 
 for her presence (simply because she is drawing his very life 
 and soul out of him, by a magnetic and exceedingly nrysterious 
 but diabolic process), sighs, longs, yearns for her as the babe 
 a-hungered does for its mother, or the parched and thirsty soil 
 for rain. When she has him well in hand, she tries her power 
 variously, as by putting on airs, being whimsical, odd, jealous, 
 exciting his jealousy ; insisting that, unreasonably, he shall dis- 
 card all others, but her own bleary self, and she delights in tor- 
 turing and exciting him in every possible way. She will make 
 him promises, purposely break, and then, when he least expects 
 it, fulfil them to the letter. If he is poor, she will offer to, and 
 frequently actually will, assist him ; and at other times will 
 extract his last dollar. Now she doats on him ; then turns to 
 rend him ; ending the drama b} r falling into raptures and declar- 
 ing heaven only is to be found in his presence. She appears to 
 love him tenderly, dearly, desperately; but it is appearance 
 only ; for such a woman cannot love ; her very nature forbids it. 
 True affection is a garden barred to her access hy flaming 
 swords, as in the land of Eden in the twilight of the foretime. 
 That strange passion she inspires is no mere fane} 7 , no idle hal- 
 lucination, or imaginative fantasia, but is fearfully real, but 
 lurid, dreadful, soul-benumbing, will-paralyzing, unmitigatedly 
 demoniac in its effects upon the man, if the subject of its hor- 
 ripilant energies be a man ; or on the woman, if the victim be 
 such ; but the pestilent power is wielded ten times by females 
 to every once by the sterner sex. While under the spell, the 
 man thus vampired can only fitfully, spasmodically read, write, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 85 
 
 eat, drink, sleep, pray, enjoy life, or the society of his friends, 
 against the latter of which she takes good care to prejudice and 
 arm him, especially those of her own apparent sex ; and the 
 victim soon becomes entirely engulfed in and by this one 
 blind madness of his life, — a madness fearful from its unreason- 
 ingness, its utter fatuity, burning, fiery fervor. Let no one 
 imagine for a moment that all or even one-fiftieth part of this 
 unrest is of a passional nature, because such is not and never 
 wholly was the case ; for in a hundred other respects it is to 
 him consuming, wild, agonizing, health-destroying, heart-crush- 
 ing, moral-blasting, soul-withering ; and his life, energy, man- 
 hood, will go out of him day by day, while the thing that looks 
 like, but is not truly a woman, who is destroying all his hopes 
 of earth, and heaven too, is really as cool and unmoved as if 
 sitting at the supper-table. "Will you walk into my parlor? 
 said the spider to the fly." And such a woman is a human 
 spider ; and it matters not to her what color, age, race, or char- 
 acter the flies are, so long as they get entangled in the meshes 
 of her infernal web, and she can thereby prolong her life at the 
 expense of their blood and vitality ; for the vampire waxes fat 
 and strong, and even her hair will grow darker and more glossy 
 while she feeds upon her human fly ! The culmination of 
 the drama is either death, or a violent disruption of the malific 
 relationship. Victims everywhere may see their danger, and 
 with a single prayerful effort of the will, break their gyves and 
 burst their chains forever. 
 
 Take a ghoul as painted here from an original, and ask 3'our- 
 self, was ever such a woman really wooed ? was ever such a 
 woman really won ? — actually touched with genuine love or 
 affection ? It is an undecided question, but looks rather doubt- 
 ful, for such human beings are in this world, just what certain 
 vines and parasites are in the vegetable kingdom, deriving 
 their sole life by extracting it from others, themselves having 
 no root whatever in nature, and but little on immortal life. 
 Orientals say that no ghoul can attain to immortal life. Can 
 they? 
 
 But is even such a person beyond the pale of God's mercy? 
 
86 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 Is there no joy, no hope, for them? Are they lost forever? 
 These are terrible questions, and would require a longer essay 
 than is practicable just now ; still a brief answer may be given. 
 There is hope of redemption, but it must be found, like every 
 other true remedy for affectional ills, within the pale of honest 
 marriage, and by resolutely trying to live the higher, nobler, 
 better, and purer life. 
 
 The singular power wielded by a spider-woman fastens, 
 leashes, binds her human fly to her by cords stronger than a 
 hempen cable. She sometimes, though very seldom, goes 
 through the marriage ceremony with her victim, — for that 
 would be to tie her, — and all such women are freedom-shriek- 
 ers ; but occasionally will persuade their dupes, that in order to 
 appear respectable and stop the speech of people, it may be 
 necessary to appear as husband and wife, to do which a " mar- 
 riage under protest," or for so long as both can agree ; or a 
 " mediumistic " celebration of the rite ; or a " philosophic 
 ceremony," — all of which are blinds, cheats, shams, mockeries, 
 illegal, unrighteous, invalid, of no account in law, and much 
 less in gospel, — is just the thing ; besides which, even such 
 a swindle might give her a right to his property in case of 
 death, which she would very likely hasten by aid of a little 
 strychnine, or a few grains of cyanide, or some other photo- 
 graphic condiment, if need be ! 
 
 What fool in love could resist such blandishments ? Few. 
 Hence the chances are, that to gain her point the spider will 
 induce the otherwise sensible fly to take a trip in the cars and 
 have the "mediumistic" or "new-light" mummery gone 
 through with, after which woe be unto him, for his fate is sealed, 
 unless God's moral thunders crash upon the ears of his soul, 
 and waken him to the actual situation. God does so thunder. 
 Souls have thus awoke ; vampires have been foiled thereby, 
 and men have been saved from total wreck, and will be again ; 
 for are we not in his hands who foileth the wicked, and doeth 
 all things well, saves, with outstretched hand, whoever cries, 
 "Come, Father"? 
 
 Vain are the efforts of friends who scent the danger, and 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 87 
 
 seek to annul the disastrous rapport, and cut the cruel bonds. 
 None are so blind as those who will not see ; and so the fly's 
 whole being is wrapped up in the pale, thin-lipped spider ; and 
 nothing but her fangs in his heart will suffice to make him be- 
 lieve her aught but an angel, or rouse him from his stupid 
 lethargy. 
 
 Whoever has trouble in the kidneys, save from accident, has 
 had difficulties of an affectional nature ; and if of a vampiral 
 character, these organs are sure to be painful and disordered, 
 if not positiveby diseased. Loss of memory and fancy follow 
 next, and if total loss of nubile energy does not supervene, the 
 victim is a lucky one, that's all. Such a woman is a moral 
 leper, poisoning all she contacts ; and if your town or village 
 has a single one of the genus in it, she's a fruitful scourge 
 assuredly. 
 
 Not many years ago, when the writer's blood was a little 
 younger than it is to-day, he formed the acquaintance of a 
 woman, who was a full-blown vampire, of the most marked 
 character ; she was disliked by nearly every one, and yet in 
 spite of their teeth, so to speak, ruled everybody she met, and 
 chose to exert her baleful power over, with as much natural 
 ease as a queen bee reigns paramount over her hive ; even 
 while every one of her victims knew her to be a leper in a 
 triple sense ; for her very presence was poison, her every breath 
 redolent of something far worse than the Egyptian scourge ; 
 for while that contaminated blood and body, this did as much, 
 and burned the soul beside ; upsetting the very basis of honor, 
 purity, manhood ; and her influence was a thousand times more 
 demoralizing than that of the painted Cyprian stalking o'er the 
 town, for the reason that the latter being mercenary, only car- 
 ried a less deadly trail, and exhaled a less destructive aura. 
 The writer had rather his son or daughter should fill an un- 
 timely grave than be exposed for long to the contaminating and 
 pestilent personal atmosphere evolved from such people. For 
 it is no uncommon thing for persons sound, sane, manly, good, 
 to become utterly demoralized, even to the extent of the most 
 
88 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 terrible blasphemy, within a very short time after being well- 
 charged with the infernal exuviae, the protoplasmic evil of 
 such harpies and ghouls. 
 
 Have you never felt, as it were, your very soul's purest, 
 sweetest vitality — its life-essence, magnetic, electric and 
 nervous, combined — gushing from your entire being, soul and 
 body too, in one full, breakless, deep, rich stream, you knew 
 not why, when in the presence of particular persons ; and Which 
 in spite of you, flowed toward them, keeping you fretful, sus- 
 picious, hopeful, sorrowful, desperate, all by turns when they 
 were by, and in a longing, restless, unquietable condition con- 
 tinually, in their absence, yet in both cases without either the 
 hope or assurance, the pure, sweet satisfaction which unmis- 
 takably would attend upon a true, healthy affection, no matter 
 whether the attraction were reciprocal or not ? 
 
 Have you not heard or seen persons who have became insane, 
 utterly crazed ; and have you not been told, by those who ought 
 to know better, that true love has made them so ? Undoubtedly 
 there are cases wherein reason has been dethroned from genuine 
 love, impeded or frustrated altogether in its course ; but that 
 such is the case generally is demonstrably untrue. It is no 
 such thing in nine out of ten instances attributed to that cause. 
 Love works no such disastrous results in healthy minds ; but 
 the victims have fallen before the attack of its dreadful counter- 
 feit, now being analyzed and traced to its real and fundamental 
 causes. Love and its train are heaven-sent; but the passion 
 written of here is a thing of lower worlds than that, or this 
 either, and bears no more real resemblance to the true principle 
 than ghastly murder does to sweet charity's hand. 
 
 Have you never suddenly felt a peculiar and indescribable 
 thrill pervade your very being, when some perfect stranger has 
 crossed your path, but whose momentary, though positive in- 
 fluence, stubbornly refused to quit its hold upon you ? If so, 
 you are here called to note the difference between it and love ; 
 for the latter leaves a longing calm ; the former a quenchless 
 thirst, and fervid soul-storm. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 89 
 
 There are threes or trines in all things whatever, whether of 
 the physical, moral, mental, metaphysical, or affectional worlds ; 
 and in nothing more perfectly than in this latter ; for the love- 
 world, being the fundamental basis of human nature, has its 
 trinity even more absolutely than has any other section of man's 
 interior econon^. Accoixlingly there is, what perhaps will be 
 more clearly apprehended by the term heart-trine, or heart-tri- 
 angle. One line, ai'C, or limb of this trine, this centre being, is 
 love, by which is here meant the mutual outflow and inflow 
 (affectional systole and diastole — the tides — action and re- 
 action — response) between a woman's heart, not material but 
 emotional ; she being well-fitted, or fully adapted to her 
 opposite, and a man's heart well-fitted likewise. Wherever two 
 such are thus fully met and well-fitted, there can be no jealousy, 
 suspicion, discontent, rivalry, uneasiness, or unrest, save of 
 course, in the latter case, prior to legal and actual, mutual, 
 marriage ; but not in any one of the other items of the list. 
 
 The true and never-failing proof of well-fittedness is ever the 
 satisfiedness of the twain ; for in all such cases the loved one 
 looms up very much higher before the loving eyes than any 
 one else possibly can ; no matter how great may be that other's 
 advantages of person, position, youth, beauty, power, wealth, 
 fame, or any combination of them all. Because true love ever 
 opens the e} r es of the lover to the advantages of the loved, and 
 disadvantages of every one else, and shuts them tightly to the 
 faults of the loved and to the good points of all others. It is 
 its nature so to do. If any so-called lover, if any wife or hus- 
 band, ever hears a constant ding-dong of fault-finding and 
 criticism from the lips of the pretended lovee, or of the wife or 
 husband, it is an incontrovertible proof that the love felt is very 
 lukewarm, and decidedly fair-weatherish, is easily drawn aside, 
 gets sick quickly, and is sure to come up missing at the very 
 hour it is most needed to sustain a soul amid the war and 
 tumult of life and its accidents. Such love is no love, only 
 pride, vanity, interest, selfishness, or, worse than all, passion : 
 for if one perpetually thinks of qualities desirable in the other, 
 which that other hath not, yet refrains from constant effort tc 
 
90 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 develop said qualities in that other, then such persons are only 
 in part well-fitted to each other, — are merely friends, and by 
 no means true lovers. Love is an allness each to the other. 
 Friendship is but a partness, and is sometimes selfish, which 
 love never was and never can be. The finer the grade, nerves, 
 brain, build, and culture of a man or woman, the higher and 
 nobler are the love and friendship they are capable of feeling and 
 inspiring, so that what would pass for ardent affection with 
 and to people of grade " A," would be but a moderate affection 
 in those of grade " B." People sometimes think they love 
 above their own natural rank. But is this so ? Can there be 
 perfect unanimity where one outranks the other in the natural 
 scales, of soul, body, intelligence, and calibre? Can such an 
 union be perfect and satisfy each ? Is it not rather a magnetic 
 spell, therefore a delusion, from which both are, in time, sure to 
 awaken to actual wretchedness? Must there not be a general 
 if not special equality between them ? must not Cupidon woo 
 Psyche, and must not Psyche yield her all to Cupidon, to make 
 the relation natural and complete ? Could a beautiful cultured 
 lady return the full, deep, wild love of an earnest, honest 
 fervid, but uncultured, thick-headed savage from the foundry 
 or the ship-yard ? Can soul respond to muscle ? Doubted ! Such a 
 thing might resemble, but could not really be, genuine love. 
 Pity, compassion, aspiration, hope, tenderness, all fall far short 
 of being the sine qua non. There must be soul-equality, or the 
 pair are mis-matched. Not that intellectual powers should be 
 on a level, — for that can never be, and is hot needed, — but that 
 the great qualities of one should be balanced by some special 
 potency of equal fineness in the other. People often wed from 
 friendship and imagine it love, until some one else crosses their 
 path, wakes up the sleeper, and convinces them in ten seconds 
 of their great mistake. Friendship grows apace and keeps on 
 till death or financial operations slay it ; whereas love is full- 
 fledged, generally, at its very birth ; its subsequent work being 
 one of mere magnetic and ethereal blending or chemical assimi- 
 lation, fusing, mingling, crystallization, and condensing ; the 
 sundering of whieh produces heart-agonies compared to which 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 91 
 
 death itself were far preferable. Love, then, remember, is the 
 central figure or main chord of the great heart-trine. But there 
 are two other lines to the triangle — two more deep things or 
 love-resemblant passions in the human heart, yet which really 
 are nothing akin thereto, save in the respect in which a brass 
 coin is like the real one. 
 
 It is well to remember that- souls, like bodies, are of varied 
 timber, texture, weight, and value, just as is everything else on 
 the earth or orT it. Some are large, full, free, open, generous, 
 noble, time-enduring ; others are cribbed, crabbed, small, close, 
 mean, lank, self-important, arrogant. No two blades of grass, 
 no pair of leaves, on all earth's green fields, or in her boundless 
 forests, no two drops of water in all her teeming seas, or 
 grains of sand along the measureless stretch of her ocean lines, 
 are exactly alike ; and for a man or woman to hunt for a precise 
 affinity, viewed from their individual positions, were just about 
 as sensible a task as to undertake to match a leaf, blade of 
 grass, drop of water, or grain of sand ; for no two alike in all 
 the vast fields of space, — and remember, O reader, that the 
 material, man-bearing universe, compared to the soul-fields of 
 the vastitudes beyond, are but as a tiny little-acred islet on 
 Pacific's placid waves, — a mere egg-shell floating on the bosom 
 of the deep ! Wherefore, to count the billionfold starry homes 
 of human fraternities and zones and belts of space alone, 
 would defy a seraph's algebra ; much less to number the unit 
 souls composing them ! But, although no two souls are alike, 
 yet they are often so closely so as to be able to grow compara- 
 tive similitudes, and therefore maintain constantly coalescing, 
 and therefore happy, unions. Now take special note of what 
 follows : When a woman with a great heart, large, broad, 
 deep, high, and aspiring nature, full soul and well-constructed, 
 compact, healthy body, gives birth to a child, the father of 
 whom she hated, from her soul's base, ask yourself if it is pos- 
 sible for that child to be even one half as perfect as its father 
 may have been, and its mother unquestionably is, — an earthly 
 queen, in all but the one dark blemish ; and for which causes, 
 outside of herself, are responsible, not she. In such a case, is 
 
92 WOMAN, LOVE* AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 it reasonable to suppose that all her maternal functions were 
 perfectly performed? and she having not a drop of husbandly 
 love to plant in its nature, but with an overplus of hate, dis- 
 content, revengeful feeling, to take love's place ? Can she be 
 even half a mother under such conditions ? or do her work one- 
 quarter as well as she undoubtedly is capable of, now that all 
 the sweet honey of her nature is soured and bittered by bearing 
 a burden she hates, as well as its author? There are millions 
 of people born of just such mothers, under just such conditions ! 
 Is it any wonder that there are so many human incongruities, 
 halfnesses, angularities, contradictions, and moral malforma- 
 tions in the world ? for if such a mother fails to mark her states 
 upon the child's bodj^, she is sure to impress them unmistaka- 
 bly upon its mind, so strongly, too, that before its earthly race 
 is run, the chances are ten to one but that the malevolent or 
 otherwise non-healthful bias or influence will crop out and 
 develop itself in pronounced shape and energy ; and it may be 
 that the metaphysical thing in her mind shall, in the person of 
 her child, when long years have flown by, take form in outward 
 act, and startle the world from its propriety hy some strange 
 and unlooked-for whim, caprice, or violent deed, the seeds of 
 which she planted, instilled, before her child was born ; ground 
 into his or her very bones ; for which deed, when justice decides 
 the case, the actor is not all to blame, for, in fact, he or she is 
 less than half responsible. Why? Because her labor was not 
 one of love, willingness, heart-desire ; but her office, being a 
 semi-forced one, is very distastefully performed. Why do not 
 social regenerators look deeper than they do? Why do not 
 writers on love go to the root of the matter? Why do not 
 preachers of Christ's Gospel tell their hearers that love, family, 
 social, domestic, connubial love, lies at the foundation of the 
 social structure ; explain its laws, and enforce their teachings? 
 Now the chances are five hundred to one, that such a child of 
 such parentage will have a fine physical make-up and constitu- 
 tion, like its mother's ; but mark ye ! Whereas she has not 
 loved the unborn, it comes to the world without having her love 
 crystallized in its little heart, suffused through its tiny body, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 93 
 
 diffused over its sea of nerves, or centred in its new-born soul, 
 — a deadly wrong done it before its birth, never to be atoned 
 for afterwards ! Thus, there being no love-crystals in its nature, 
 it follows, with awful certainty, that of all its longings, yearn- 
 ings, aspirations, struggles, and demands, from the nipple to 
 the coffin, that for love will be the strongest, fiercest, most 
 poignant, restless, deep, unappeasable ; and to obtain which, it 
 will sacrifice anything, everything, — laws, customs, proprieties,, 
 decencies — all things must give way before this resistless 
 appetite and natural demand ; yet never on earth will it be able 
 to quench this natural, yet unnatural thirst, even though it 
 could consume the mountains and drink the oceans dry. Beauty, 
 wealth, talent, fame, passion, all will tempt, all be yielded to, 
 all be tried, and tried in vain. Why? Because the wrong is 
 constitutional, was inflicted before its birth, therefore, unless it 
 is possible to be born again on earth, that wrong can never be 
 redressed ; nor in this life can it be righted, and possibly never, 
 in all the vast JEterne, unless God shall do so in other worlds 
 than ours ! Citizen, legislator, moralist, preacher, woman, 
 man, do you ask to see one prolific fountain whose bitter 
 waters flood the lands with evils, murders, drunkenness, rapes, 
 libertinisms, profligacy, harlotage? If so, behold it in the ter- 
 rible facts here unmasked ! Look at them ; gaze upon, and 
 stare them squarely, fairly, in the face. Reason them down? 
 Correct them by jails, gibbets, insane retreats, or surmount 
 them by any subterfuge? Impossible! The blood of Christ? 
 No, even that will not do it, for the purest in the land, select 
 agents of the living Cod, all fall before the storms thus origin- 
 ating, and for a time repressed, but only to gather greater force, 
 to burst in fury on the world, scattering death, desolation, ruin, 
 and despair on every hand. Blood won't do it. Love's the 
 only remedy, and that in the nature of a preventive, not as a 
 cure ; for it must be applied months before the child is born ! 
 Talk no more about the divinity of Free Love. Behold its 
 roots, and marvel no longer at the wraggled bitterness of its 
 pestilent fruit. Patent panaceas for the world's great sickness. 
 
94 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 indeed ! Go to ! Whoever fancies that anything but connubial 
 love can cure it, is — an idiot. 
 
 The aptitude for inspiring a peculiar form of what passes for 
 love, and for being attracted by others, resident in such chil- 
 dren everywhere, is, indeed, wonderful, enormous, because they 
 continually crave what nature herself tells them is their greatest 
 want. Nor can lust appease these fires, albeit that is in many 
 cases the dreadful resort they rush to at first, until they find, 
 as all do, sooner or later, that the fires grow more quenchless by 
 the tery means hoped and relied on to put them out. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Marriage is, but ought not to be, a lottery, in which both 
 parties too frequently draw blanks ; hence it has come to be 
 looked on with suspicion by far too many men, and by an 
 equally large number of women ; but the latter are often, by 
 stress of circumstance, compelled to enter it, if for no other 
 reason than what they hope may be gained thereby, — a home : 
 and at any rate shelter and protection, — such as it is ! 
 
 A pupil in Sabbath school being told to define matrimony, 
 and having heard a lady declare that that word and purgatory 
 were convertible terms, replied, — matrimony — purgatory, — a 
 place or state of punishment, where people suffer, for longer or 
 shorter terms, the agonies of the nether hells, previous to their 
 entrance into heaven. The lad was not far wrong, — as times 
 go! 
 
 It is related that a celebrated wit when told that an ac- 
 quaintance had just married, exclaimed, Glad of it ! But 
 reflecting a moment, his countenance changed to a compassion- 
 ate expression and forgiveness, and he added : Yet I do not 
 know why I should wish him so great an ill, for the man never 
 did me any harm ! 
 
 Such things ousrht never to be said of the holiest estate known 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 95 
 
 to humanity ; nor would they be if love prevailed in the home- 
 stead, and children were born with hearts and souls and bodies 
 too, full to the brim of a health that pervaded and enthrilled 
 every department of their natures. 
 
 Love, of all other things, qualities or passions of the human 
 soul, and body too, may truly be said to be of a fluid nature, 
 because it flows forth, goes to, and fills up, those empty or 
 void places or cells in all unfilled hearts and spirits of the human 
 world, to and for which it is adapted, and was designed to by 
 the great Supreme. 
 
 If love is fluid it must obey the laws which, in other depart- 
 ments of the universe, govern all things of like nature. These 
 all seek their level ; so does love. "We have already seen, in the 
 case of the vampire-grade of mankind, that in their cases there 
 is an awful void, the inevitable consequence of which is, that 
 wherever they go, or whoever they come in magnetic or even 
 comparative contact, or proximity to and with, there is 
 straightway and forthwith an involuntary affectional and mag- 
 netic tide setting toward the empty heart from the full and 
 flowing one ; and with especial strength if the vampire be 
 female and the full one a sensitive male. This leeching opera- 
 tion will take place, however, even if both parties be of the 
 same sex, or the full one be a child. This self-same vampirism 
 sometimes takes a still more horrible form, and in that case, if 
 the ghoul be female, she feeds on her own sex. If a male, then 
 boys become the victims, and both resort to practices too 
 infamously horrible to be more than hinted at, much less 
 described. This grade of demons abound in Boston to a far 
 greater extent than any other spot on earth, as the police 
 records prove ; and yet probably one-fiftieth of the villany is 
 never found out and punished — with death, as it should be ! 
 — for that, Ingratitude, and Foeticide are the three king crimes 
 of the world, the nation and the age ! 
 
 Philosophers, or rather scientists, have told us that attraction 
 resides in a point, and that said point must necessarily be 
 greater in volume, bulk, weight, soliditj^, than the entire com- 
 bination of all the other points, bodies, atoms, or worlds which 
 
96 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 are attracted by it, for such is the inevitable, inexorable, 
 mathematical law. Now these philosophers are mainly right, 
 and yet they are wrong ; because both fluids and bodies rush 
 toward and into a vacuum quite as forcefully as they do toward 
 a bulky, and in the gravity sense, heavy centre, from whieh 
 centre they are repelled at the precise moment whenever the 
 two forces exactly balance each other. But there is no driving- 
 off force, or repellant power exerted from emptiness, in other 
 words, a vacuum ; hence whatever rushes thitherward must 
 inevitably be swallowed up, dissipated, lost ; because an abso- 
 lute, positive, actual, or an even comparative void, necessarily 
 is immeasurably more attractive than any magnetic thing, 
 centre, or body, that could possibly have an existence. For 
 instance, to demonstrate this almost self-apparent truth by a 
 simple example : suppose that it were possible to displace the 
 Ether of Space at any particular section, or point of the sidereal 
 heavens ; and to cause a limited, but yet a certain circumference 
 to be wholly, entirely, destitute of aught save Room, an actual 
 vacancy, and what result would instantly, tremendously, 
 follow? Why, every planet, sun, system, galaxy, every 
 single globe, asteroid, meteor, ay, every atom in the entire 
 material universe, would be instantly checked in their orbital 
 careers, and with one universal consent rush toward that 
 empty space to fill it. But if, after they reached that point, 
 they were dissipated into, say luminiferous ether, or light, the 
 rush would continue until not an atom, not a particle of matter 
 would remain in God's great domain as a field for the exercise 
 of his benignant energies. 
 
 Now the laws which govern all matter are but the external 
 expression of principles imminent in mind, spirit, and the 
 general soul of things ; for we have attraction, repulsion, 1'ise, 
 flow, ebb, storms, clouds, sunshine, heat, cold, quite as much 
 in our mental and the hyperph3 T sical as we do in the gross 
 material world, save that these laws and principles express 
 themselves far more positively and vehemently in the meta- 
 physical than in the atomic or particled universe. This is no 
 mere assumption, having no firmer foundation than the writer's 
 
WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 97 
 
 ipse dixit, but is the grand conclusion arrived at by every 
 thiuker from iEg}'ptia's Thoth, down to the last essayist upon 
 the subject now on the globe. It must therefore be considered 
 an irrefutable dogma ; and being so it follows, with merciless 
 precision and force of logic, nay, absolute certainty, that in 
 the case of a person organized as stated, and types of whom 
 abound everywhere, that the verj' void or emptiness of his or her 
 soul constitutes an attractive, pulling, puvipiny, drawing force, 
 infinitely greater, stronger, more certain in its effect, than if 
 that heart were filled and teeming with purest, clearest, jouis- 
 sant human love ; for which reason persons thus constituted 
 must and do, both of will, purpose, and absolute necessity be- 
 sides, not merely attract others with a force equalling their own 
 sad void, but also, as a matter of mere vital magnetic life and 
 existence, make large and copious draughts upon each and 
 every differently constituted human being with whom they can 
 gain even an ephemeral rapport, no matter what the sex, age, 
 race, or grade may be. A3 7 , they will even draw the life of 
 animals ; and birds, dogs, cats, and some plants actually, nay, 
 frequently, have their death-warrants signed and sealed through 
 such companionship ! TVTioever, whatever, sentient thing stands, 
 lies, sits, or moves with such, almost invariably feel a pleasur- 
 able magnetic thrill, — a sure indication that their vif or life, their 
 love and strength, their force, power, and even will, is going 
 from them toward tbe strange fascinator ; generally resulting 
 in a morbid liking, an almost irresistible drawing, mentally as 
 well ; followed shortly by a sense of exhaustion, peculiar, and 
 to them unaccountable. They do not dream that their gentle 
 tyrant is a ghoul, with the difference that these last are fabled 
 to have fed on dead human beings, while the former devour 
 living souls ! In this statement is revealed the deep meaning 
 lying behind the oriental and derivative Italian terms, mal 
 occhio, jettatura, — the evil eye. Such persons easily acquire 
 masterj- of the affections of others ; j T et whoever yields to the 
 accursed spell slowly but surely perishes, because their love is 
 all drawn out of them ; none whatever is returned, and when 
 the supply runs out, then come madness, despair, utter reftness, 
 
98 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 and such desolation as only quick souls can know and languish 
 under ; while if confirmed insanity, consumption, and sudden 
 death do not follow, the wonder is all the greater. 
 
 Doubted? Then you have never fallen beneath the dreadful 
 fascination. How can there be life or love without ebb and 
 flow, and if it all runs from you to fill a cormorant void, what 
 else can you do but break the spell, stop the flood, or lay you 
 down and die? How can there be happiness, joy, health, with- 
 out interchange ? and if you give and never get back, what else 
 than a grave yawns immediately beneath your very feet ? How 
 many prematurely dead people owe the deep damnation of their 
 taking off, to this one cause ? Millions ! here, there, around 
 you, everywhere ; and yet the wretches who foster the state of 
 things which father such results dare to call themselves bene- 
 factors of the human race ; and there are, doubtless, thousands 
 who will read this book, yet blame the author for striking at 
 the wrong with sharp words and ungloved hands. But then, 
 such people have not felt the steel in their own hearts ; have 
 not been robbed of all; have not lost wife or husband by the 
 foul thing ; nor wept over the green grave of a beautiful 
 daughter or promising son, brought there by the system here so 
 freely ventilated, — and from the spiritualistic branches of it 
 too ! Not that all who believe that doctrine are amenable to 
 the charges here rammed home, but that many — nearly all 
 whom the writer ever knew — were, and are. But the story is 
 not yet fully told. 
 
 When two people interchange real affection, the divine fluid 
 element, whose presence in us makes us noble, good, strong, and 
 great, both parties retain what they severally receive, and each 
 is better for it in every sense, in every way. Not so in the 
 other case ; for no ghouls can retain what they rob others of. 
 They are cormorants, vultures, with no centres in them around 
 which either the good can gather and cluster, or the loves ciys- 
 tallize and condense, or points in their natures for it to cling to 
 and adorn. They consume it just as stomachs and lungs do 
 food and air. A tiger feeding on broiled beef and game would 
 transform that beef and game into ferocity and vindictive energy ; 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 99 
 
 so would a tiger man ; whereas an artist or poet would change 
 them into flowing verse, or beautiful transcripts of nature ; and 
 just so a true man converts the love he drinks in, into good, 
 truth, beauty, and high resolve ; but the ghoul converts it into a 
 point d'appiri, whence he or she can play their infernal enginery 
 upon other victims, with whose life-force they never were, and 
 never can be, satisfied or satiated except for a time, like a 
 glutted wolf, only to return with new appetite to the banquets 
 of blood, every one of which is seasoned with salt tears, and 
 appetized with the dreadful music of breaking hearts ! 
 
 Voracious to the last gasp, conscienceless as an India-rubber 
 doll, what care the}- for desolated hearts and homes, so long as 
 their turns are served, and they can find fools to believe that 
 whatever is, is right ; God but a form of electricity ; morality an 
 idle dream ; retributive justice a flimsy conceit and bugbear ; 
 and human virtue the natural food of "Philosophers" and 
 " Pantarchs." 
 
 Here rises an apparent paradox, needing explanation, from 
 married life. Thousands of wedded pairs to themselves and 
 others appear to love each other, yet make it a point of their 
 lives to Lave other fountains whereat to slake their amatory 
 thirst ; nor really think they are doing wrong. Wiry? Because 
 something was radically wrong about their parents for the ten 
 months preceding their birth ; hence, they are obtuse on all 
 points of honor involving love-matters ; they are constitution- 
 all}- incapable of correct motives in such directions, because 
 also incapable of true reasoning in that particular line. There's 
 a chronic morbidity which needs correcting. And it can be. 
 If the whole truth were to be told, it would be found that mil 
 lions of wives and husbands have secretly gone to the bad, who 
 were and are not eveu suspected of fallibility in that line by 
 their mates, or any one else ; and they pass through life wholly 
 unscathed, yet are generally the hardest persecutors of any poor 
 devil who was too weak to resist temptation, and not smart 
 enough to avoid being caught ! But these are effects ; causes 
 must be looked for in another direction, and the one underly- 
 ing the above facts is, because such persons can no longer draw 
 
100 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 from their partners the peculiar magnetic life they require ; and 
 are rusher] into vice by the resistless impulsion of a bad bias 
 entailed upon them by progenitors perhaps of a century before. 
 And here, too, Ave have new reasons for the exercise of the 
 loftiest pity of the human soul, else we, in our blindness, may 
 condemn as a sinner some poor victim of a terrible and in- 
 herited disease, whose roots, penetrating the bod}', are fast 
 anchored in the very floors of the constitution and the soul 
 itself. " The greatest of these is charity ! " 
 
 How very little positive mental light there is in the world, 
 after all ! How hard to see the line connecting cause with 
 effect ; and what a deal of inane twaddle there is afloat con- 
 cerning the loves of the human being ! Sometimes, as these 
 pages were penned in odd hours snatched from the thousand 
 people who throng to the writer's office just to see what an 
 author looks like, and consume his precious hours to little 
 effect, save to exhaust his vitality hy force of much gab, and 
 his patience by their boring, he has been tempted to throw up 
 the task in sheer despair of being able to dispel even a little 
 of the dense fog which obscures the subject and involves love 
 itself in almost impenetrable mist. However, the approval of 
 a sensible man and woman, now and then, who dropped in for 
 a friendly chat, and not to weary him with platoons and squad- 
 rons of unanswerable questions, confirmed his purpose to keep 
 on working at the book. That's why he did keep on. 
 
 Bees, failing to find hone}', soon die. Ghouls, failing to find 
 victims, exhaust themselves and perish. But others, who are 
 but partial vampires, manage to live on and thrive apace ; and 
 many there be of this latter class who themselves suspect it not. 
 The test of the fact is : If an affection brings rest and satisfaction, 
 it does not spring from this second member of the heart-trine. 
 But suppose a person, on strict analysis, makes the discovery 
 that he or she really belongs in this groove, this love-reft grade 
 of being, how can the bad qualit}' be overcome, subdued, 
 evanished from the nature ? The reply is : That when one finds 
 one's self partially morbid on the application of the test, — 
 satisfiedness, or unsatisfiedness, — with one love, then a resolute 
 
JTOiTAX, LOVE, ASj.) MARRIAGE. 
 
 101 
 
 mil, self-restraint, the culture of the higher and nobler elements 
 Df character, and perfect reliance on the Supreme, are the only 
 possible antidotes for, and correctives of, the pestilent bane. 
 
 Let us take one more step onward and downward in this 
 analysis, and question Nature and science too, about the third 
 great member of the heart-trine, and describe a class whose suf- 
 ferings are acute beyond all mortal telling, and who are fit 
 subjects for even an angel's or a seraph's tears. 
 
 Different, very different, from the class of persons just out of 
 our mental crucible, is another, whose numbers far exceed either 
 of those already treated of, — at least within the pale of Cau- 
 cassian-Teutonic-Latin civilization. But of all lands they 
 abound on this American soil. 
 
 This last class of persons not only suffer untold misery here, 
 but probably are unhappy for long periods after quitting this 
 mortal frame. Yet human pity seldom reaches them, because 
 human intellects do not yet, save in rare instances, comprehend 
 the nature of their peculiarities ; and instead of studying the 
 matter thoroughly, society — nearly all its members — blindly 
 blames people for the adverse or intense action of a physical, 
 mental, moral, and affectional chemistry, or chemico-constitu- 
 tional make-up, over which they had and have no control, any 
 more than they do of that lesser chemistry which determines 
 the color of eyes or hair. And yet not even organization can 
 justly be pleaded in defence of any person whomsoever, unless 
 that person shall persistently fight against the bad tendency, 
 and so weaken, if not completely neutralize, its effect upon 
 them ; for only in so far forth as we exert our force for the 
 right, and against the wrong and unhealth, are we really men, 
 are we really women ; and it is impossible to be either, in the 
 true, full sense, so long as we suffer what we know to be an 
 evil to rule over and govern our actions. One single victory 
 over a bad impulse weakens that impulse and makes us 
 stronger, and subsequent triumphs far more easy of achieve- 
 ment. Especially is this true of all matters concerning the 
 affectional life of mankind. 
 
 The class already described, and the one now being treated 
 
102 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAIiRIAGE. 
 
 of, are precisely alike in one respect, and one only, because 
 each is but a human halfness. Both spring alike from the 
 bosoms of talented mothers, highly developed, finely organized, 
 of susceptible temperament, and keen, emotional natures; and 
 both are graded and classed pre-natally ; are fashioned well, 
 but not by love. Take a woman of a highly sensitive, deeply- 
 feeling nature, and suppose her to bear a child whose father she 
 hates, and hates intensely. But, mark } t ou, whereas in the first 
 analysis we found the mother hating also the office she was ful- 
 filling, — motherhood, and its fruit, — the babe unborn, — 
 take notice that such is not the case with this second mother in 
 its latter aspects ; for she, unlike the other mother, does not 
 bring a vampire into existence, because she does not hate the babe 
 she is charged with ushering into the great man-wanting world. 
 She does not perform her maternal task unwillingly, however 
 she might have shrunk from the initial steps and fearful risks, 
 but the step once taken, she has no regrets on that score ; but 
 rather clings to the consequences, that she may have what all 
 beings are entitled to, — something to love, and be loved by in 
 return. She is never reluctant to bear the ills resulting from 
 her condition ; nor does she ever so far forget her human duty 
 as to inwardly curse the innocent unborn, as notoriously do 
 thousands of wives and mothers in the barbarous pails of the 
 earth, which are chiefly the great manufacturing centres and 
 most densely populated cities of the so-called civilized world ! 
 This second mother loves her coming son or daughter to a 
 greater degree of intensity, if that be possible, than that where- 
 with she hates its father. She clings to it with a devotion 
 which leaves nothing thereof for all the world beside ; and she 
 pours into its tiny being all the rich, ripe fulness of her entire 
 selfhood, — from the base of her physical being, to the coronet 
 of her immortal soul ; and it is because such women have borne 
 such children, that the world has in all ages had its remarkable 
 geni ; angular, crooked, eccentric, passional; for there never yet 
 was a very great man who was not weak in that department of 
 his nature. If it be said that Newton, whose fame was com- 
 plete at twenty -four ; Johnson, who was a great bear; Milton, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 103 
 
 whose life was vixenized out of him, or Humphrey Dav}-, — a 
 celibate, — were exceptions to the rule, yet the reply is, All 
 these men had inner lives and experiences ; and probably so 
 covered up their amours as to defy all prying eyes and laugh at 
 Mrs. Grundy. But we shall be told that Randolph of Roanoke 
 was a great man, yet wholly non-passional. The reply is the 
 fact resulted from pre-natal malformation, and not from choice 
 or will. But allowing these cases of genuine genius to be 
 exceptional, they but prove the rule, for wherever you can put 
 your finger on one such, we can point to five hundred others 
 whose lives and experience demonstrate the rule. 
 
 Persons descended from such mothers enter the world with 
 an overplus, a vast excess, of that very quality whereof vam- 
 piral persons are utterly destitute. The one has no love, the 
 other is all love. The former are born sensualists, the latter 
 born lovers, because their entire being, souls, spirits, bodies, 
 are filled with it, and the consequence is that no one attachment 
 is capable of satisfying them ; but their love flows out every- 
 where, to everybody. Captivated now by the short, then by the 
 tall, npw by the refined, anon by the opposite, — nowhere, now 
 there, — human bees sipping honey from every flower, and not 
 seldom leaving a sting behind, and badl}- stung at other times ; 
 changeable, ephemeral, intense, violent, are the}- ; loving to 
 the death this week, and wild after new faces the next. Such 
 persons are the geniuses of the world, the cometic people, who 
 bound at a leap to the most stately truths of being, and dash 
 off poems and prose brimful of power and soul, with a careless 
 abandon and ease perfectly astounding to the slow pacers who 
 do not know the secret ! Such persons have been the arch-magi 
 of all times ; the true seers, the strange delvers after mysterious 
 things ; for, discontented with this little earth, they have dared 
 to force the portals of the grave and wrest strange and mighty 
 secrets from their custodians on the farther shore ; and for them 
 alone have the golden realms flung wide their gates and laid 
 bare to daring e}-es full many of their hidden histories. 
 
 No man or woman of them all has ever been a villain, or 
 sunk to infamy and crime ; for such beings forever move down 
 
104 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 life's pathways between two angels, — a good and an evil one ; 
 the latter continually suggesting ill, the other always saving by 
 the resistless might of the Hidden Hand, — as the writer of 
 these lines hath often seen proved. 
 
 Power is one thing, happiness another, and genius was never 
 yet known to be happy. Joyous, yes ; jubilant, frequently ; but 
 whenever it takes a flight to heaven it is sure to dip its wings 
 in hell, for it constantly oscillates between the two ex- 
 tremes. 
 
 Sensitive to the last degree, it readily is impressed by others, 
 and accordingly blows hot or cold as impulse dictates, whim 
 or fancy may determine ; all being regulated by its surroundings 
 and associations. But it is ever true to its central idea, what- 
 ever that may be, — music, art, the drama, sculpture, poetry, 
 oratory, — and is only inconsistent when measured by the small 
 standards of those who stupidly stare at, talk about, scandalize 
 and condemn, but can never understand it. How can a candle 
 comprehend a comet, especially when contemporaneous with it? 
 How and why expect sluggish souls, dull, leaden brains, thick, 
 cartilaginous, half dead, and wholly non-magnetic, non-electric 
 nerves, understand the vivid lightning, and vehement, fervid 
 fire of true and absolute, even if eccentric and unbalanced 
 genius, — genuine soul power? or with tape-line measure the 
 measureless flight of a being who, pitying his earthly kindred, 
 turns skyward and claims kindred with the Infinite? — a being 
 whose soul is surcharged with the intense white fire of the im- 
 mortal Gods ? who scorns the petty honors earth affords, and 
 seeks communion only with his equals, on earth or in the 
 vast Beyond, — because his soul is pure, crystallized love ! — love 
 planted there by the mothers who bore such beings to the world 
 and G"od ! 
 
 Mutual love between parents balances the characters and 
 natures of their children ; and such children ever move above 
 the crowd, but never rush well-clad where genius delights to 
 roam barefoot, naked, and alone ; because love lieth at the 
 foundation, and love, restless, inspires its unrest and its flights. 
 Such persons almost invariably love children, plants, tender 
 

 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 105 
 
 animals, poetry, music, art ; and are never jealous of others, 
 even in their own chosen fields, for they instinctively know that 
 no other human being can possibly fill their own peculiar 
 groove ; hence, whenever you hear a so-called " genius " berat- 
 ing and uncharitably criticising another, you may take it for 
 granted that their power is not real ; and their claim to its 
 possession but a very pleasant fiction, believed in by no one 
 but their own silly selves ! for your true geni is ever one- 
 sided, but never a knave, poltroon, defamer, or a coward ! 
 But the vampire is always a miserable creature, from an inborn 
 lack of genuine man or womanhood. 
 
 A being of the grade just described, taken generally, nearly 
 always carries a breaking heart in his or her bosom. The 
 children of the former class — the vampiral sort — very often 
 reach the prison, brothel, and the scaffold ; and not from impul- 
 sive criminality, but with prepense (forethought) in their 
 career, for overt acts, against the weal of man, of which acts 
 themselves alone are not wholly guilty. On the other hand the 
 children of the other class — the true geni-producers — are 
 almost always tender buds who blossom into short, but packed 
 and concentrated lives, during every day of which they live 
 more and longer than some others do in a month ; and then they 
 pass away from earth to make room for other human beings of 
 a less intense nature, order, kind, character, and degree. 
 
 Wiser than most people on great subjects, perfect childlings 
 on small, such persons, born of such mothers, under such con- 
 ditions, — that is, hating the father, but loving his child, — are 
 generally quite blind to the affairs, not merely of their own 
 purses, but of their own hearts, because avarice is small, trust 
 in others very large ; complete fools in matters involving dollars 
 and cents, they on the other hand drink in copious draughts of 
 love from space, and beauty, and art, the drama and music, and 
 never hesitate to pour it out in rich libations wherever, to 
 whomever, and whenever opportunity offers. Their affections go 
 out with reality, freshness, fulness, spontaneity of well-wishing 
 and better doing, to all human kind ; and being strongly, and in 
 very many cases almost inevitably drawn to those who express 
 
106 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 by word or look, tenderness, friendship, or interest in their 
 welfare ; measuring others by their own generous, upright, 
 trusting, honest hearts and souls, are sure to be misunderstood, 
 scandalized, betrayed, and readily fall victims to the wiles of 
 people with less than one-tenth their own amount of thinking 
 brains ; and are generally repaid for their goodness by insult, 
 mockery, slander, and neglect. If a man, he is always poor ; 
 if a woman, she is sure to wear mourning weeds from the altar 
 to the cradle, from that to the grave ! 
 
 It was stated at the outset of this analysis of the heart-trine, 
 that, aside from the central and genuine love, there were two 
 other existences, both of which, in many respects, resembled 
 the true and normal affection of the human being. Both these 
 others are, as has been seen, abnormal, and both abound in our 
 world to-day. The first must be mainly, though not always, 
 looked for, in the extremes and radical ranks of the age ; the 
 other can be found any and everywhere, because marriage in 
 our day has been so profaned that its human products are 
 mainly one-sided, angular, and wholly discontented. 
 
 The root of the whole matter of human wrong, in these as 
 well as all other respects, must be looked for in the ofttimes wil- 
 ful ignorance of people generally, concerning the rules and laws 
 of nature which under ly and subtend not merely our earthly 
 existence, but our happiness or misery at every beat of the 
 clock of time. 
 
 This is a juvenile world, and most of its inhabitants are 
 exceedingly young and unripe, not to say absolutely green ; 
 for, just like babes of tenderer growth, they push their pleas- 
 ures be3 r ond the verge of constitutional endurance, and then 
 gape and wonder at the bad state of things, moral and health- 
 wise, which legitimately ensue from, not only their stupid dis- 
 regard of the up-building laws and rules, but their prompt and 
 continuous obedience to their opposites, or the laws which tear 
 down, sap, disintegrate, demoralize, and finally destro} 7 . Men 
 and women, as we meet them in the streets of the world, look 
 civilized, tame, reasonable ; and so they are, outside, when in 
 public, but in the dark, O Lord ! Could we with our eyesight 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 107 
 
 penetrate the heavy curtains at the windows, or peer clown 
 through the slated roofs, we would behold sights and scenes 
 exhibited and enacted by these polished civilizees, sufficiently 
 childish, ay, detestable, sometimes infamous and diabolical, to 
 put all the devils of nether space into wild, fantastic hell-bursts 
 of demoniac glee ; for we should behold people supposed to be 
 sane desperately trying to set fire to their own bodies by con- 
 stantly swilling what they knoiv to be rank, pestiferous poison ; 
 and then, when duly fired up, exerting every energy of soul, 
 spirit, body, mind, to speedily finish their mad careers by drain- 
 ing themselves of every true element of power, extinguishing 
 every divine spark of virile life and genuine man and true 
 womanhood. And yet this self-same civilization whiningly 
 complains of the brevity of life, and pitifully growls out that 
 all is vanity and vexation of spirit. The countryman or 
 laborer envies the banker and millionnaire, and these latter pine 
 for the laborer's jocund health, spirits, and digestive power. 
 The servant-girl envies the courtly dame and mincing miss, 
 and finding labor will never carry her where she wants to be, 
 takes the first opportunity of being tempted, by a rich man ; 
 sells herself, reaches the plains of gaudery, and, when too 
 late, finds out what a simpleton and fool she has made of her- 
 self. Others, love-starved, resolve to make reprisals on the 
 world at large ; and then they make nests, out of which come 
 whole broods of vampires, ghouls, and every other malforma- 
 tion of the human soul and body. 
 
 You can't expect manhood of little men, — little souls, 
 pinched, starved, robbed of their birthrights before they were 
 born ! nor can the Christian world make things better and 
 radically renew the vigor of the race, morally or religiously, 
 until it takes these social and domestic vices by the nape and 
 heels and hurls them out of the windows of the world ; and that 
 it can never do by preaching as it does, but only by attack- 
 ing sin, not man ; and by taking as continual texts, sound 
 bodies, sound love, sound souls, hence sound morals. True, 
 God himself is daily doing this ; but then it is safe to say that 
 we ourselves can aid the good work. One thing is certain : 
 
108 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the jo3 T s which come to human beings through love and virtue, 
 infinitely overtop and exceed those which reach him on the 
 high-pressure principles of vice and excitement. Every roue, 
 libertine, prostitute, gambler, in the wide world, who has run 
 their race and returned to virtue and the homeside, will tell 3*011 
 this is true ! Disobedience of natural law is a bad investment ; 
 excess is quite as ill ; perversion is worse ; repression is 
 suicidal, and only restraint and temperance bring the pro- 
 foundest, highest acme of social joy ! 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 love's chemistry. 
 
 People are wont to laugh at what they might at first sight 
 call the ridiculous idea that love is in any sense chemical in its 
 nature, operations, or effects. But probabby they would cease 
 smiling upon discovering that other mental or spiritual emotions 
 produce most decided chemical effects upon any human being 
 subject thereto. For instance, talking of lemons makes our 
 mouths water ; grief allays hunger ; fear produces intestinal 
 relaxation ; doubt dries up the palate ; rage increases the glan- 
 dular action of the mouth ; jealousy turns and alters the entire 
 action of the liver, and fills the whole body with its green, 
 slimy bile. Loss of confidence, love, affection, immediately 
 reacts upon the kidneys, and sometimes so utterly changes them 
 that the urea passes directly into the blood, and insanity is the 
 next step. Thus we might go on to the enumeration of hun- 
 dreds of proofs that emotion and chemical changes are but 
 convertible terms for one and the same thing. 
 
 But, says the caviller, emotion is of the soul, and if this doc- 
 trine be true, then its non-materiality is disproved, and — 
 There, that will do, for if the soul exists at all, it must have 
 form, size, dimension; occupy space; be something! which it 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARJtlAGE. 109 
 
 certainly does and is ; and there must be a circulation of both 
 body and soul, and a third circulation here announced for the 
 first time, common to each other and both at once. The 
 proof has just been given ; for we have seen how a deep-seated 
 soul-emotion must have been conveyed from the crypts of being 
 to the outer organic structure, for otherwise it is clear that no 
 effect could have been produced upon the physical organism. 
 So much, in brief, for that fact ; now for its application. 
 
 Every one of us when in love becomes aware not only of a 
 change of both mental and physical previous states ; but also 
 that we are full of a divine something which was not there be- 
 fore ; that this something, like an electric thrill, passes all over 
 and through us, sending the hot blood to the brow and cheek ; 
 two kinds of tears — joyous and not so — to our eyes, forcing 
 the red tide back to its heart-fountains, and blanching us white 
 as snow ; thrilling us with strange preternatural strength and 
 force, and rendering us weak and helpless in a single moment's 
 time. We also know how, when it is sapped from us, we be- 
 come exhausted and quite beaten out, and we know also that 
 extreme hunger is capable of destroying even a mother's love ; 
 for such have been known to resort to cannibalism in famines, — 
 their own flesh and blood affording the victims. 
 
 If love and passion, beside being metaphysically emotional, 
 be not also in some sense material and chemical, why and how 
 is it that the glance of an eye will utterly transform, not merely 
 a man's whole nature, but his appearance in others' eyes? 
 And yet these self-same identical appeai'ances and effects follow 
 the adminstration of certain drugs and gases, and by unmis- 
 takable chemical agencies simulate all that is accomplished 
 through other means in their absence, but in the presence of meta- 
 physical motives and impulsions altogether ! Now there are 
 certain nervous ganglia in every human being, whose office it 
 is to extract from all that enters into the human economy 
 certain vital essences akin to electricity, magnetism, and nerve- 
 aura, but which yet are not identical with either of the three ; 
 and under certain excitements this peculiar fluid-power, this 
 white-fire of the human being, rushes from its cells and crypts 
 
110 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 through the body like t3 T phoons on the sand}' sea of sun-parched 
 Zahara. If the rush be toward the amatory organization of 
 the individual, generally, including head, heart and passione, 
 there's no harm done ; for it is under such triplicate proper 
 conditions that the loftiest interests of parentage find their 
 truest scope and interests, save of course where the inflammatory 
 state becomes chronic, in which case disasters threaten on every 
 side ; but when these results are tidal, periodic, orbital, the 
 expression of the grand diastolic and systolic law, harmony 
 follows and happiness is conserved. 
 
 If this tide flows entirely to the head, lungs, and heart, our 
 mentality is at high flood, and we are capable of lofty thought, 
 noble, daring, grand, and magnificent heroic action. If it 
 wholly deserts our brain, lungs, heart, and does not stop at the 
 generative centres, we become craven cowards, weak-legged, 
 pitiful, and paralytic. 
 
 In these days persons of both genders abound who are so 
 badly organized that at the slightest provocative all the hidden 
 forces named come to the surface, and in a brief period sur- 
 round them with an atmosphere which whosoever breathes, 
 even for a very brief period of time, forthwith becomes tinctured, 
 poisoned, contaminated with the dreadful, fiery exuvia ; and as 
 at present it is fashionable to call things by fine and fancy 
 names, this sort of devilism is styled "Passional attraction; " 
 is said to be a positive proof of fitness and fineness of soul, and is 
 hailed as demonstrative of superior organization on the part of 
 attractor and attractee ; when in fact it is as deadly a moral 
 and magnetic poison as would be strychnine disguised in a 
 delicious Persian sherbet ; and whosoever shall be so unfor- 
 tunate as to contact such affectionally diseased persons need 
 not be surprised to find all the apocalyptic plagues following as 
 a consequence. Even a normal love is liable to fevers, chills, 
 disease, by reason of unsound body, brain, nerves, and vitiated 
 blood ; for pure white milk cannot unsullied flow through con- 
 duits of foul black substance. True, it will still be milk, and love 
 will yet be love, but neither of the fluids can be sweet and clean. 
 
 Now of all things that tend to lower the tone and standard 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. Ill 
 
 of affection, excitements are the worst, because they vitiate the 
 body and injure the mechanism of the mind, hence are ruinous 
 to life, therefore destructive of love. It is folly to think that 
 any outer treatment alone can cure a person of any form of 
 disease whose roots lie buried in a disturbed mind or diseased 
 affection, — and to such causes are attributable four-fifths of the 
 diseases of Christendom, — unless the will and moral nature are 
 first brought right. 
 
 To expect to make a sick man or woman well, whose ail- 
 ments spring from overtaxed minds, or disturbed affection, the 
 effect of which is to paralyze or otherwise disease the delicate 
 organs, nervous papillae, and ganglia, whose office and function 
 is the evolution of that divine nerve-aura alluded to before, — 
 the physical love, itself the vehicle of soul love, — is to expect 
 water to voluntarily run up-hill. The age of miracles is not 
 past, certainly, yet the day of that particular sort went by long 
 ago. Virtue is its own reward ; but the word does not mean 
 physical chastity, but human strength, soul-power to resist 
 attacks from within, not merely those from without ; and 
 especially those which beset us on our loving side. 
 
 A violation of our own self-hood is the worst form of rape ; 
 because no victim of another is held responsible for violence 
 offered and accomplished, except wherein that " victim " of 
 free-will made the conditions of the outrage possible ; in which 
 case the guilt must be divided ; for the temptation may have 
 been the promoter of the crime ! But whosoever takes good 
 care to resist all morbid action in and of themselves is truly 
 virtuous, or strong, because sensible that wilful neglect of 
 common-sense precautions exposes them to magnetic and 
 affectional waste and suffering ; and if the elements of life be 
 wasted, the economy cannot possibly expand and grow ; and 
 therefore the essential man or woman — the soul and spirit 
 itself — must become dwarfed and warped, because it is of the 
 surplusage of this fine aura the intellectual human principle 
 fashions and elaborates its superphysical investiture, its real, 
 but incorporeal, immortal body ; and if in life, and strength, 
 and youth, we throw away the elements, — the bricks, so to 
 
112 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAURIAOE. 
 
 speak, — wherewith shall that body be upbuilt ? This is a serious 
 and solemn point for consideration, and at once shows the 
 absolute necessity of avoiding not only excess and baleful 
 counterfeits, personally and in association, but also of so 
 strengthening our souls and bodies too, as to be wholly invul- 
 nerable either to vampiral attacks, or amatory temptations, 
 come in whatsoever form or guise they may. Of course the 
 advocates of perpetual celibacy will affirm that if a great deal 
 kills, less will injure ; forgetful that either sex is but a halfness, 
 and that reciprocation and mutual interchange is the secret of 
 perpetual peace and harmony, in that and every other possible 
 relation in the universe, so far as we know it. They forget 
 that any power non-used brings as great a load of misery and 
 punishment, though of diverse kinds, as does its exact opposite, 
 and that though repletion is bad, inanition is equally so. 
 
 In essaying an analysis of the two sexes, a good Methodist 
 brother in meeting declared that woman was just like man, 
 with a little variation ; whereupon a good deacon clapped his 
 nands and shouted, "Thank God for the variation ! " and the 
 whole male audience cried out " Amen ! " and the sisters re- 
 marked " Te, he ! " It is a common mistake, and a bad one, to 
 place the sexes on a par or equality in any but three general 
 senses, — affection, intelligence, immortality ; for in all minor 
 points they are as widely different as south from east. 
 
 In all matters directly or obliquely pertaining to the love- 
 nature woman is not only more one-sided, but far more cruel 
 than man, and as a dissembler of love can give him heavy odds 
 and beat him out of sight ; so skilful can a woman become in 
 this respect, that she is capable of deceiving the sharpest man 
 alive, and make him believe, and ready to swear to it, that she 
 loves him to the borders of idolatry, when in fact she don't 
 care a straw for, and just as like as not uses him for her own 
 ends, and laughs at him in her sleeve. No man can break 
 from a woman without a pang ; but a woman will part from him, 
 her love-kiss warm on his lips, and without a word of notice 
 abandon him forever. A sphinx? A riddle? An enigma? 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 113 
 
 Ay, Gocl never made so great a one as Woman, who is at 
 once tenderer than a new-born babe, and tough and cruel as a 
 tigress at the same time. A woman can nearly always tell 
 when a man loves her, but he's a wise being who can take his 
 Bible oath that a given love of any given woman is the genuine 
 or simulated. Hence men have but one test of the reality of a 
 woman's love, — if she sticks in the dark hour, she is true. Yet 
 nothing but the dark hour can prove it ! 
 
 She has not proved herself capable of fairly reasoning and 
 deciding justly. She always mixes her feelings and prejudices 
 with the results of her judgment, and never yet gave a genuinely 
 honest verdict. If her cool judgment weighs ten pounds, and 
 there be one single ounce of feeling, judgment and justice are 
 sure to kick the beam ; for a woman can no more divide a char- 
 acter, and attribute credit to its fair side, if there be one single 
 tiny speck against which she feels, than she can radically change 
 her sex ; she is far less generous than man, and is the bitterest 
 of all foes against her own sex. No matter how finely she may 
 declaim in public on the wrongs and the horror of intolerance 
 and the virtue of forgiveness, the cases are very rare in which 
 she exercises practical charit}' and forbearance or the pardon 
 principle wherever her feelings are engaged against the offender. 
 While, as for the self-elected women's rights' leaders, their love 
 for the poor ranks, for the sewing-girl and cast-away, is really 
 all bosh ; for not one of them would lend a helping hand, unless 
 the act was sure to get into the papers next day. 
 
 People, the masses, have yet to learn that in these days phi- 
 lanthropy is a trade, followed so long, and only so long, as it 
 will pay. Another thing to be learned is that there are some 
 things a woman never forgets, and more things a woman 
 never forgives. Think of that ! 
 
 One of the opposite sex, no matter how barbarous he may 
 be, will be able to find many good points about even his foe, 
 give him credit therefor, and vent his indignation upon the bad 
 side only ; but a woman never does this, and one little blemish 
 in a character is seen by her to over-bulk and over-freight a 
 whole continent of good qualities. The writer once knew a 
 
114 WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 woman in Massachusetts, who deliberately tried to ruin the best 
 friend of her life, and one, too, with a thousand good qualities, 
 of all of which she was well apprised, — and there are thousands 
 more just like her, — simply because his nature could not be en- 
 tirely subdued by her blandishments. She could not bear that 
 he should have or express affection for any one but herself, old 
 or young, male or female ; and finally she became jealous of the 
 Deity, and cursed the man because in his prayers he exhibited 
 greater confidence in the Almighty than he did toward her. 
 And yet that very woman was a flirt, and took it very hard when 
 expostulated with on the subject. But, these two faults aside, 
 a better woman than "Kitty of the West" never drew the 
 breath of life. 
 
 This morbid approbative selfishness is the bane of many a 
 household, and the grim squelette in many a closet. It were 
 well if wives, and those expecting to become such, would ask 
 themselves, Is it right? and forthwith correct an altogether too 
 common evil ; not that any female should cease to crave and 
 expect homage, — which every gallant and true man is but too 
 glad to pay, — but that the demand should not be so broad as 
 to exclude all the world except her own sweet self; for men 
 will kick against tyraniry, and are very apt to even undervalue 
 the woman's really good qualities who so far forgets her duty 
 to herself and him as to often try it on. 
 
 A woman finds it hard to tolerate worship, love adoration of 
 anything or any one except her children and herself. But 
 those who blame her for this are harsh and hasty in their 
 judgment, because a woman is love incarnate, and when she 
 fails to obtain that, her failure is complete and total ; for what 
 were all the world to her, what honor, place, beauty, — any- 
 thing, everything, — without the one grand desideratum of her 
 nature, — love, whole love, right straight toward her, and her 
 only ; and an object to reciprocate that love and send its 
 counter tides of thrilling jubilance to the vast receptacles of her 
 peerless spirit ? Nothing ! Give her but that, and you may 
 take all the world beside. For in the glorious light thus 
 thrown on her it is seen why even her intolerance is a part of 
 
WOMAN, LOrE, AND ATA Mil AGE. 115 
 
 her very being, and a hand pointing the way to the vast realms 
 of joy lying on the table-lands of love's grand domain ! Men 
 have a thousand means of dividing their life and life's attention. 
 Not so women ; because there are but two, — and both are 
 loves, — maternal and conjugal. Hence, while the former in 
 their estimate of a person are able to discriminate between 
 opposite points of character in another, and do justice to both, 
 woman, on the contrary, if she finds one dark spot, is sure to 
 magnify it till the little speck becomes a huge black blotch, 
 an inky cloud, totally obscuring every light spot or brilliant or 
 good quality in the individual. If a man, however good, and 
 however long his goodness may have lasted, commits a faux 
 pas, bursts out in anger, says one harsh or thoughtless thing 
 offensive to the Amour Pkopre or amour du sex, to coin a 
 phrase, she can never forgive it, but will eternally pit that 
 single error, defect, or action, against the combined excellences 
 of a life's devotion. It is an ever-present memory, ready to be 
 paraded at all times, and brought up against the unfortunate 
 when he least expects it. This is here presented to teach men 
 to beware of the first false step toward fracturing in a woman's 
 nature what can never be repaired. Many things a woman 
 can, will, and does forgive, but never a preference of a rival 
 against herself. She may be convinced that a man loves her, 
 but never afterward gets rid of the unrest occasioned by even an 
 apparent estrayal. This, too, is why she is so utterly pitiless, 
 cruel, and merciless toward her own sex. If she loves, she that 
 moment becomes blinded to all the defects of the loved one, 
 except admiration for another woman ! Intellectually she is by 
 nature and culture irrational, unjust ; but affectionalry, emotion- 
 all}-, devotionally, presents the most surprising antithetical 
 peculiarities ; so that the person loved to-day will continue to 
 be loved with a fervency quite astonishing so long as she be- 
 lieves herself alone beloved ; but the very instant she convinces 
 herself, even by the absurdest of logic, that that person is 
 recreant, then she becomes stone-blind to all his good points 
 and advantages ; and she despises, hates, abhors him with an 
 extreme unction, and keen, incisive vehemence, wholly un- 
 
116 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 known to most mankind, and only partly appreciable by men 
 of feminine, psychical make-up. Now it is not so with a man ; 
 for his love, once fairly kindled, survives nearly all shocks, 
 and he will take her back even from the slums to whose foul 
 cesspools she may have fallen ; and forgive her, too, when taken 
 back ; and in this respect there is no question of man's superi- 
 ority, — that is, in the endurability of a genuine love, and its 
 surmountability of offences against itself. 
 
 " False one, I love thee still ! " rnajr often be said by a woman, 
 but is far oftener meant by a man ! It is possible for a woman 
 to survive a real affection, but the man never lived whose heart 
 became wholly steeled against the woman — whatever her sins 
 may have been — who first taught his soul to languish beneath 
 the delicious, delirious, exquisite spell of actual love ! 
 
 But there is one very strange mystery, too deep for present 
 solution ; which is, that obstructed love destroys more women 
 non-possessed, than it does femmes convert, or after actual mar- 
 riage ; while more men fall and perish from it subsequent to 
 that event in the ratio of seven to one, statistically ! 
 
 Happiness and misery, joy and sorrow, bliss and agony, ever 
 and always go hand in hand, and the most glowing pleasure of 
 life floats in a sea of anguish. The old French fable says — and 
 oh, how truly ! — that one sunny day. Love and Death set forth 
 on their travels, each with his quiver full and bow strung, pre- 
 pared to strike. "When night came, they threw their bows and 
 quivers carelessly down, and fell asleep beneath a tall tree. 
 The next morning, when they awoke, the wind blew cold ; alas, 
 in their haste, Death snatched up some of Cupid's darts, and 
 Cupid some of Death's missiles. Ever since that fatal day 
 Death sometimes aims at a wrinkled, care-worn old man, and 
 his arrow bears not death, but love and life. Whenever Cupid 
 hears the prayers of mortals he strikes, and sometimes the 
 shafts of love bear with them death. 
 
 And Elizabeth Barrett Browning : — 
 
 " The little birds sing east, 
 And the little birds sing west, — 
 Toll slowly ! 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 117 
 
 And I said in under-breath, 
 All our life is mixed with death, 
 And who knoweth which is best? 
 
 And the little birds sing east, 
 And the little birds sing west, — 
 Toll slowly ! 
 
 And I pause to think God's greatness 
 Flows around our incompleteness ; 
 Round our restlessness his rest." 
 
 "Were it not so, love and all things else would be a human 
 scourge and our greatest possible foe. Let us be thankful that 
 it is our discipline and salvation. 
 
 There is a very singular, and quite appallingly curious cir- 
 cumstance attendant upon a very great number of marriages in 
 America, but notoriously of the east and north, — but which 
 is almost if not entirely unknown in any other land on the 
 habitable globe, — which is that a bride's love often comes to a 
 sudden and resurrectionless death within a very few hours after 
 the verbal ceremony has been — mumbled over. The bridge 
 of marriage looks long and fair, but no sooner does she enter 
 one of its dark arches, than her dream is dispelled, and for- 
 ever. Then begins a reaction from the revulsion, whose final 
 fruits are loathing ; and the divorce court, apothecary shop, 
 or the brothel tells the balance of the story. 
 
 It is equally certain that a woman becomes infinitely dearer 
 to the man who loves her under precisely similar circumstances ; 
 and it may be set down as a truth incontrovertible, that whenever 
 or wherever a woman becomes less dear to a man after she has 
 yielded all a woman can, but who turns from her, or repels 
 her caresses, the thing is infatuation, passion, vanity, egotism — 
 anj'thing, everything, but never love; and to use that holy 
 term in such a connection is a profanation and blasphemy ! 
 Here then is a test of easy but absolute certainty, applicable by 
 any one of either gender. But, and let this never be forgotten, 
 such tests are always inapplicable in the ill health, moody, 
 
118 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 capricious seasons of the tender sex, at which times that and all 
 other rules and laws are suspended by more than a two-thirds 
 rule in her behalf. To be certain of never making mistakes 
 there is but one thing necessary on the part of any one what- 
 ever, and that is to alwa} T s be good and true, for goodness alone 
 is power, in spite of old Bacon's adage that knowledge only 
 constitutes it. Knowledge may and does strengthen one ; but 
 force or strength is a very different thing from wisdom and 
 power ; and this is here asserted confidently in the teeth of the 
 sciolists of the day, Buckle and all the other philosophers to the 
 contrary notwithstanding. The most knowing men are the 
 greatest bankers, soldiers, merchants, theorists ; and the most 
 heartful men are the greatest benefactors of mankind. Contrast 
 the loving, feeling, heartful Jesus, with the headful, brainy 
 Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, Bacon ; or the good Wesley, with the 
 scholarly Swedenborg ; or measure the life-work of a country 
 parson with the brilliant brainisms of airv metropolitan, classi- 
 cal, gilt-edged expounder of super-eruditionary capacity, full to 
 the lips of logical points, sequences and corollaries, but with a 
 heart -as empty of Jesus Christ and his blessed religion as a 
 last year's bird's-nest is of fresh laid eggs at Christmas — up 
 north. 
 
 People of mere brain-power ride their hobbies roughshod over 
 the peoples and the world. People of heart-power conserve 
 that world's best interests, and in them only are its best hopes 
 anchored. Woman all head, intellectual amazons, new-right- 
 ites, are to the really feeling and thoughtful a sad spectacle 
 indeed. Not a single womanly glance irradiates their features, 
 cr a tender thought inspires their-utterances. Never a gentle, 
 sweet emotion beams from their faces, or a warm, feminine 
 feeling lights up their eyes, — eyes so cold they freeze j r ou ; 
 marble women, with granite hearts and cast-steel souls, inca- 
 pable of making a man happy, or gladdening the homeside ; 
 females without femininity, sexed, but only in appearance, 
 eternally babbling frothy nothings about love which they prac- 
 tically know nothing of! God help that unfortunate wight 
 whose temporary insanity may have led him to commit an unpar- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 119 
 
 donable sin by leading one of them to the altar, in the vain 
 hope of making her a wife ! Wife ! great Heaven ! what a 
 burlesque on the sacred name ! For a man might just as soon 
 expect a painted tree to bear fruit, as that such a being is 
 capable of wifehood, in any single one of its myriad phases, 
 offices, or divine meanings. Divine ! No — merely human, for 
 they never reach that solid plane, by reason of their brainy 
 surplusage of " ideas, polarities, primary and secondary sub- 
 jects, mathematical halves, circulating phenomena, quantita- 
 tive limitations, circumferatory generative spheres, compen- 
 satory integrants, projected dynamic conditional existeae, 
 initial and subtending, cotangential, parabolic (diabolic), 
 dividential, harmoniacal, centrifugated, centripitalized, personal 
 circumstantial compatibilities," — usque ad nauseam ! Give us 
 true womanhood ; let the rest go to Jericho, or anywhere else, 
 so long as we get rid of the perpetual, impractical, radical ding- 
 dong, wherewith our ears have been stunned ever since the 
 early days wherein the Hutchinsons began to whine about the 
 good time coming ! which hasn't got along yet, and never will 
 until it has better means of getting here than all radicalism 
 combined affords. 
 
 Life and love are each full of modes, phases, grooves, 
 aspects and moods, and all of them are mysteries, never wholly 
 solvable by the intellect, but only, if ever, by the human heart ; 
 and yet they are both the subjects of chemical law, for it is 
 demonstrable that a very slight change will so turn a man's, 
 but especially a woman's, nature, as to make her loathe what a 
 day before she doted on and adored. 
 
 When a man turns against another, the change is gradual, 
 never volcanic or sudden ; not so with a woman ; for she can, 
 will, and does, change in a great deal less than the twinkling 
 of an eye, or of two eyes ; and it is not an uncommon thing 
 for a woman to bitterly hate the man, for whom less than five 
 minutes before she would have freely perilled life and limb. In 
 that mysterious moment something — what? — has taken place ; 
 love has been ousted never to return ; and the woman's entire 
 
120 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 character has undergone a complete and radical upheaval and 
 overturning. Thenceforth she never is to him, herself, or any 
 one else, what she was before. Talk of photographic-plates 
 being sensitive. Pshaw ! a woman, at times, is ten thousand- 
 fold more so than the most delicate glass ever yet manipulated. 
 
 Therefore the wise man who has a woman under the tribute 
 of affection must look sharp, else he may mar his happiness in 
 a second of time. 
 
 And now another paradox of the wonderful sphinx. There 
 is many a woman whom hardly anything on earth will change 
 in the slightest degree ; yet that self-same woman, under differ- 
 ent circumstances, will transform from angel to devil in less 
 time than a rapid penman could indite the words. 
 
 All this is chemistry, and that, too, of the most subtile kind. 
 
 The grandest oration ever delivered could have been made to 
 terminate in lugubrious bathos by a very few drops of Croton 
 oil ; and the greatest hero the world ever saw will quit the 
 heroics suddenly, when impelled thereto bjr a few grains of 
 tartar emetic ; and even a person with suicidal thoughts intent 
 will experience a sudden and pej'during change by the persua- 
 sive power of a spoonful of lobelia : while all human experience 
 demonstrates that happiness and misery alike depend quite as 
 much upon physical and chemical states as they do on more 
 mystical causes. Very slight chemical changes in a person's 
 body, whether produced by matter in any of its subtle forms, 
 or whether they result from emotional reactions, are competent 
 to entirely alter the aspect of a whole life, and determine the 
 grooves of a human career. Contemporaneous history proves 
 this on a very vast scale ; the entire chain being thus : I. 
 Isabella of Spain, by injudicious feeding, became affectionally 
 deranged. II. That derangement was beyond the power of her 
 husband, the king-consort, to remedy. III. There thus was 
 engendered in her nature a morbid want, sufficiently energetic 
 to cause a desire to forget both her dignity and wifehood ; and 
 under its devilish impulsion she cast about her for an object 
 upon whom to place her diseased affection. That object she 
 found in Marfori, an ordinary soldier in the ranks, — so goes 
 
womax, love, and marriage. 121 
 
 the tale, — and the inspiring idea of Offenbach's " Fritz," in 
 his Opera Bouffe, "The Grand Duchess of Geroldstein." 
 Isabella raised Marfori from his subalternship to the rank of 
 Grandee of Spain, and Queen's favorite, thereby offending the 
 pride and blood of Ajragon and Castile, the arrogant dignity 
 of the Hidalgos and the Cid, and laid, with her own hands, the 
 fatal train whose explosion shattered two of the proudest mon- 
 archies of earth, — France and Spain, — raised a third-rate 
 power of Europe to the first rank and leading position of 
 States, — Prussia, — disrupted the Roman Church, shattered 
 the Papacy, devastated a dozen nations, spread havoc through 
 the world, and changed the fate of empires, affecting the very 
 bases of civilization itself. 
 
 Step No. P7. witnessed her dethronement and contemptuous 
 flight to Paris, — itself steaming with moral filth and corrup- 
 tion, and ready at a touch to burst forth in self-consuming fire 
 and flame. Step V. was the attempt to enthrone a Hohen- 
 zollern in her stead ; and the awful war that followed that 
 attempt, culminating in Sedan and a series of compound disas- 
 ters to all concerned, including the silly woman, Isabella, and 
 the miserable fool, Marfori, the whole culminating in a still 
 more dreadful, because fratricidal, civil war. The end is not 
 yet, for out of all this trouble will yet spring greater ones, 
 involving the slaughter of myriads, the overturning of other 
 dynasties, the abrogation, finally, of kingship the wide world 
 over ; the installation of his majesty, The People, on the throne 
 of the earth, and the beginning of the better end. All spring- 
 ing — these tremendous effects, the last being God's part 
 direct in the vast drama ! not man's — from a disorderly 
 love-life ; a species of amative madness in a woman, caused by 
 too high living, too much play, and no work at all, which 
 course of life generated in her body a little tiny animalcule not 
 larger than the point of a pin. 
 
 But this little worm caused a great deal of trouble, and 
 made a mighty sight of history. 
 
 Let us now take another, and somewhat different view of 
 
122 WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRTACE. 
 
 that ■wonderful something, the human soul, in its operations 
 where the divine master passion is concerned. 
 
 Are they not strange and mysterious, the marvellous resem- 
 blances between a child and the originals of the phantomesque 
 images in the mother's mind, living or dead, passive or active ; 
 in other "words, of a person about whom she frequently and 
 persistently thinks ? for it is be} r ond all dispute that a woman 
 will bear a babe to one man, the body and features of which 
 may be the exact image of another, whom she may not so much 
 as have even seen for a j T ear or more prior to its birth ; and 
 that very child may, in after years, develop a mind and other 
 mental similitudes exactly like those of a third man, of whom 
 she is likewise innocent ; and yet that babe bear not the re- 
 motest likeness to its actual male parent, or even any of his 
 kith, kin, or lineage. Such things have been, are, and will be 
 again, and on the strength of them many an innocent woman 
 has been rashly, unfeelingly, condemned. Of course there is a 
 preventive of such mento-cheinical effects, and it consists in 
 the husband so favorably and constantly impressing his wife 
 that she shall have neither time nor inclination to think of, or 
 about, any other man than the lord of her heart and father of 
 her child, — only that, and nothing more. True, photographic 
 accidents of that sort will occasionally happen in the best 
 regulated household ; but the chances are slim, if love holds full 
 sway ! 
 
 In this connection there is a curious thought to offer, which, 
 although rather transcendental, yet is nevertheless worth a 
 brief space in these pages. It is this : Why may' not what 
 Darwin affirms to be unquestionabty true of the quadrumana, be 
 also true of the bimana, and especially true of man? The ex- 
 perience of thousands of stock-raisers warrants the great natur- 
 alist's affirmation in reference to cattle, and why may it not 
 also be of their lord paramount, Man? If the law in question 
 be really true, then the idea above advanced finds a scientific 
 foundation, and the legal quibble that a child ought to resemble 
 its father is not wholly orthodox or sound ; besides which it is 
 well-known that thousands of children do, in fact, resemble 
 

 WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 123 
 
 neither parent. Says Darwin, in his " Origin of Species," 
 " When a breed has been crossed only once by some other 
 breed, the offspring occasionally show a tendency to revert in 
 character to the foreign breed for many generations, — some say 
 for a dozen, or even a. score of generations. After twelve 
 generations, the proportions of blood, to use a common ex- 
 pression, of any one ancestor, is only one (1) in 2048 ; and 
 yet, as we see, it is generally believed that a tendency to rever- 
 sion is retained by this very small proportion of foreign 
 blood." 
 
 Here, then, is an idea worth remembering, for that the same 
 law is in even fuller and stronger force in mankind, b} T reason 
 of its higher grade, is not only reasonable, but demonstrated ; 
 for how veiy often do we see persons who, resembling neither 
 parent, yet bear striking physical and mental likenesses to 
 ancestors and races of mankind more or less remote? This 
 being so, — and there are but few families along the distant lines 
 of which greatness or goodness has not cropped out strikingly, — 
 suppose a pregnant woman, who has love at home, chooses to 
 mentally dwell upon that heroic, great or good ancestor, who 
 shall tell us that she will not, ma}' not, produce a new and im- 
 proved edition of that original, by virtue of the mysterious 
 triple action of the law under discussion ? Darwin goes on to 
 Bay, " In a breed which has been crossed, but in which both 
 parents have lost some character which their progenitor pos- 
 sessed, the tendency, whether strong or weak, to produce the 
 lost character, might be, as was formerly remarked, for all that 
 we can see to the contrary, transmitted for almost any number 
 of generations." Well, in the light here shown, how true it is 
 that evil, in whatever shape it be, wears itself out, and the 
 excellent only goes on ripening itself and adding to its volume, 
 while its opposite pursues the contrary course until, at last, it 
 topples forever into an eternal grave ! 
 
 Who can doubt but that by the mystic force of will and 
 prayer, a woman may draw down to her while pregnant, and 
 crystallize in her child, measureless seas of good qualities, 
 which may have ripened in the souls of myriads of her ancestry 
 
124 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 on both sides, and also upon those of her child's father ; why 
 may not she lay siege to and capture those fuller powers 
 which theretofore have been only germinal points in the four 
 lines of ancestry ? Certainly this is a mighty thought, and a 
 true one too. 
 
 The author believes that every good human trait, though 
 asleep for a century, will at last awaken to the grand exercise of 
 re-creative and re-formatory energy ; for in man, as in the ani- 
 mal, — vide Darwin again, — " When a character which has been 
 lost in a breed reappears after a great number of generations, 
 the most probable hypothesis is, not that the offspring sud- 
 denly takes after an ancestor some hundred generations distant, 
 but that in each succeeding generation there has been a ten- 
 dency to reproduce the character in question, which at last, 
 under unknown favorable conditions, gains an ascendency." 
 
 But as man infinitely ranks above all animals, those good and 
 upward tendencies can be awakened and struck into effective 
 operation by the resistless potentiality of a pure, clean will, 
 and the exercise of the moral muscles of the human soul. 
 
 The great majority of females in this land of free America 
 are weak in will as in nearly all other proper and healthful 
 culture ; because their hot-bed, false education, and modes of 
 extreme life, loosen the very ligaments of character ; the con- 
 sequence of which is that ill-health, torpid viscera, cadaverous 
 faces, 3'ellow skin, poor teeth, aching frames, brittle bones, 
 periodic nausea, faulty periodicity, out of which grow morbid 
 fancies, domestic trouble, chronic griefs innumerable, and total 
 lack of will-power, and moral resolution, — characterize Ameri- 
 can females, even out of crowded cities ; and good health is 
 invariably the exception as an almost universal rule. 
 
 Men also lead such very rapid lives, that the}' are not much, 
 if any, better qualified or fitted for the true connubial life than 
 women are, for the most of them are passion-driven, victims 
 of too varied and violent modes of existence, and nine young 
 men in every ten } r oung men are far better calculated to destroy 
 a home from such destructive causes than to build it up health- 
 fully and rightly. Married women, too, as a general thing, owe 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 125 
 
 much of their actual misery to too much exercise of certain 
 faculties, and far too few of other sorts, in consequence of which 
 most of them are ill two-thirds of the time, and suffer in thou- 
 sands of other ways, which no man can possibly know, ap- 
 preciate, or understand. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The human mind and body sympathize, to an extent at 
 times perfectly marvellous. American women — if we except 
 the Indians and Blacks — do not get enough sunshine, nor ex- 
 ercise of the muscles of the back, shoulders, and abdomen ; 
 neither do they breathe deeply or often enough to thoroughly 
 vivify and ox} r genate their blood, or to mechanically expand the 
 lungs and thorax. The remecty suggests itself: In the cool 
 season, people — women and children particularly — inhale alto- 
 gether too much hot, rarified air ; air rendered deleterious by 
 those abominations before God and man, closed cast-iron 
 stoves, every one of which ought to be sunk in the salt sea ten 
 thousand fathoms deep, and their places supplied by open 
 grates, or, what is still better, the good, old-fashioned Frank- 
 lin. 
 
 Civilized woman is altogether too careful of her crinoline ; 
 too careless of her neck and feet. Too much weight depends 
 from her waist, too little from her shoulders ; she is too fond 
 of wafer-soled shoes, too heedless of the advantages of heavy 
 foundations. Many females live to eat, instead of eating to 
 live ; are too fond of concentrated sweets, edible but indiges- 
 tible flummeries, pies, cakes, strong tea, nick-nacks, confec- 
 tionery, — albeit pure sugar candy, and a fair share of sweets 
 are essential to the physical life of love, while excess in its 
 use most unquestionably leads to amatory folly likewise. 
 
 Here let it be known that the girl who accepts confectionery 
 from her lover, as a general rule, is a fool, no matter how well 
 she thinks she knows him ; for many and many a girl has lost 
 
126 WOMAN, LOVE* AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 all that she was through a package of candy — undrugged 
 candy at that. And, candy ! Well, the writer of this knows 
 people in Boston who drug confectionery for the vilest of pur- 
 poses. Their shameless advertisements used to appear in a 
 respectable Boston daily ; and to this day, at least, one large, 
 wholesale drug house displays upon its walls the flashy card of 
 a conscienceless wretch, said card informing the hundreds who 
 pass in and out there daily, that for a trifling sum they can 
 
 procure " Professor 's celebrated candy." "Well, a villain 
 
 buys it, breaks it up with other confections, gives it to " his 
 girl " as they take a moonlight walk. Presently she eats it ; 
 feels an unusual flow of spirits, succeeded by drowsiness ; a 
 bagnio is near at hand, — he advises her to drop in at his 
 "aunt's "till she feels better; they enter, — a glass of wine, 
 and her blood is on fire in an instant — even though she never 
 felt such flames before. Well, she leaves that house a ruined 
 girl, — the victim of one damned scoundrel, put up to it by an 
 infinitely worse one. The meaning of this statement is : 
 Young girls, never eat candy given you by a lover — never! 
 He may be honest, but be you on the safe side ; and if you eat 
 it at all at his expense, select it yourself, in the store ; but 
 never touch a bit he brings you ! Then you will know you are 
 not eating, — and, — and, — and the still worse, — all of which 
 are hell's own condiments, and nothing less. 
 
 An ounce of genuine affection and love, shed from a husband's 
 manner, goes a great ivay toward filling the void in a poor wife's 
 heart. Per contra, many a woman is undeserving of any hus- 
 band at all, judging from the notorious fact that every tenth 
 man regards his home as above all places the spot where he 
 enjoys himself the least. If it were not so, the brothels would 
 not be so well sustained, as they unquestionably are, by — 
 married men! Thousands of wives practically believe that, so 
 long as they keep the house, and tamely submit to the ofttimes 
 unreasonable whims and caprices of the head of the house, 
 especially if against their own inclinations, they have done 
 their whole duty ; but that is a great mistake, aud a fatal one ; 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 127 
 
 for when a husband sees that his wife values herself more upon 
 her physical relations toward him, than she does upon the infi- 
 nitely higher, because mental, moral, aud aesthetic ones, he is 
 very apt in time to accept her at her own valuation, and treat 
 and regard her accordingly. Yet this very identical rock is that 
 upon which thousands of homes are yearly wrecked and shat- 
 tered to very flinders. Another thought just here. Women 
 complain, and justly, too, that they are forced to accept unwel- 
 comeness; but they forget the unwelcome homage their husbands 
 are obliged to paj^, is heart-breaking to the man, and that its 
 effects on him are to sour his soul, and rn:ike him anything but 
 what he ought to be. Woman ! woman ! the rule works both 
 ways, and a husband has as much right to expect warmth, as 
 you have to expect tenderness and affection. Woman was 
 made to love, yet few know how to do it. She was made to be 
 loved, and might be, by her husband, if she only took the pains 
 to teach him how. She has a right to be respected and admired 
 for certain qualities which are infinitely superior to mere physi- 
 cal sex. Mental sex is what men love most. She is ever 
 wronged unless she is admired by those around her, and by all 
 the world. It is her intuitive sense of this heaven-born right, 
 and her natural and spontaneous determination to obtain it, 
 that from the year One, till to-day, has prompted every female, 
 from Dahomey upward, to set off her charms to the best advan- 
 tage. Show us a woman who despises dress, and we will show 
 you a female monster with a bad spot in some corner of her 
 mind. 
 
 All women are aware of the power of dress, but in these days 
 they pervert it. Go into any parlor and you will find a very 
 fine and gorgeous display of millinery, but an exceedingly poor 
 show of brains, if solidity and real sense count for anything ; 
 for the whole aim seems to be to reach the acme of sensational 
 flip-flappery and show. 
 
 Jessie II. Jones, in the " Women's Journal," a Boston sheet, 
 runs a terrible tilt against the present style of women's dress. 
 She claims, indeed, that for the last six or eight years women's 
 dresses have been devised by the courtesans of Paris. Hear 
 
128 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 her : " It is a further fact that these fashions were specially 
 devised by these women for the very purpose of aiding them in 
 carrj-ing on their trade more successfully ; that is, to make 
 them ' more attractive ' (to use a euphemism which being 
 translated into plain speech, means, more exciting to the 
 passions of) men. The highest artistic power that can be 
 used has been successfully prostituted to the securing of this 
 bestial purpose. In short, the present prevailing style of 
 dress may be fittingly termed courtesanship in woman's cos- 
 tume. These Parisian women, who have devised these styles, 
 are those who for to-day correspond to the priestesses of As- 
 tarte, the Zidonian Venus ; and our Christian mothers and 
 sisters, the Hebrew of to-day, have gone mad after these abom- 
 inations of the heathen, are literally wearing the uniform of the 
 priestesses of such a goddess. I am speaking now of walking- 
 dresses. The flaps and tails, the frills and the furbelows, and 
 even the airy curves of the outlines of the short overskirts, as 
 these are all combined together, were intended to be, and their 
 natural affects are, fit adjuncts to the trade of the strange 
 woman. Not even in the days of Ahab was the licentious 
 paganism of the Jezebel's native Tyre more flaunted in the 
 face of those Israelites who remained faithful to the true God 
 than is to-day, in matters of dress, the licentious paganism 
 flaunted in the face of American Christendom, and that, too, by 
 Christian women." 
 
 And Jessie Jones is right. Enough on that point. 
 
 A woman, unless she is loved, and made aware of it, not in 
 flatteries and honeyed words, — which speak the language of 
 mere blood-heat oftener than anything else, — but in the ten 
 thousand little attentions of life, is by far the most miserable 
 creature in God's creation, except the man who does all he can 
 to merit a wife's love, unavailingly. 
 
 "Where a wife finds herself regarded as a drudge, slave, and 
 plaything ; where and when she sees no comfort and joy, feels 
 not a warming, genial ray of life's sunshine, has no friendly 
 bosom in which to pour out the aching fulness of her heart, — 
 the great flood of her gathering grief; has no one to "kind" 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 129 
 
 her, and speak and act lovingly to her, — what wonder that she 
 revolts at times, and not only forgets her " duty," but her own 
 personal dignity and self-respect, under the blandishing but 
 destructive influence of that lying and salacious philosophy now 
 so current, which teaches that disobedience to the marriage vow 
 is obedience to the commands of God ? What wonder that she 
 occasionally becomes blinded by philosophic mist, when she is 
 offered that, which from her ignorance of the real article at 
 home, where she ought to find it, she mistakes for true, heart- 
 felt, heaven-sanctioned love? There is no cause for marvel, 
 nor that so many have fallen so low that it is difficult to rise 
 again ; but there is a marvel, and a mighty one, that such vast 
 numbers, such untold hosts, have triumphed, not merely over 
 temptation, but achieved a nobler task, — the victory over 
 self. 
 
 Per contra : What marvel that many a well-meaning man 
 has been driven by his wife's coldness, offisliness, petulance, and 
 vinegar disposition, from the home he tries to love, but cannot 
 on that account? What marvel that such a man — and God 
 knows there are thousands — should be blinded by the sophis- 
 tical special pleading of Satanic philosoplry, and comes to the 
 conclusion that he is justified in seeking in the caressing arms 
 of a wanton that solace which his wife will not give him. Tak- 
 ing the average of men, and estimating them at their true 
 value and positions in the great scale of the race, there is but 
 little room for wonder that they thus exemplify their human 
 weakness ; but there is room to marvel that so many men, under 
 such provocation, and surrounded bj' so many and potent temp- 
 tations to err, still remain true to their wives, still labor for the 
 household, still fight the world for bread, and die without tast- 
 ing one single drop of the exquisite honey of Home Love ! 
 
 One great and fatal mistake that men make is, that they deem 
 it beneath them to either study or yield to a woman. Not one 
 man in twenty thoroughly understands a woman ; not one 
 husband in fifty really knows his wife. A woman is a mine, 
 exhaustless ; the deeper you go, the larger diamonds will you 
 find. Most men live on the surface — feed on the edges of 
 
130 WOMAN) LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the marital pasture. Men think they know woman, but really 
 are entire strangers to her nature. They underrate her impor- 
 tance, intuition, and divining power. As for the author, he 
 would rather face ten men, with the " devil " at their back, than 
 enter the lists with a woman determined on his defeat and 
 rain ; and, on the other hand, had rather take the word of a 
 woman who was a real friend, than rely on the sworn oaths of 
 a whole battalion of men ; for men have a bad habit of sajnng 
 much and performing little, while a woman says little, but does 
 much when the time for action comes along. 
 
 The majority of men practically regard woman as a softer 
 sort of male ; treat her as such ; square their conduct towards 
 her as if she were a man in all respects. In all things save one 
 she is looked on as if gender extended not beyond the physique. 
 Wrong ! wrong ! She is of finer mould and stuff, and converts 
 her food into several materials and juices more than man does. 
 She has finer and acuter sensibilities, and is infinitely more 
 susceptible, not only to the same things which affect man, but 
 experiences whole classes of sensations to which the male must 
 forever be a stranger ; and from the cradle to the grave she 
 moves along a path parallel to, but never once merging into, 
 that which man travels, in spite of what the rightites aver to the 
 contrary. Go where 3*011 will, find her where you may, you 
 will discover that she is ever disgusted with many things which 
 constitute the solace and delight of the male ; while she enjoys 
 the acme of felicity in things totally insipid to a man. 
 
 Woman is everywhere an instrument of music, capable of 
 giving forth strains divinely sweet and soothing ; and sensible 
 men seek to evoke and profit by it. Properly played on, the 
 tones called forth are sweeter than ever came from any other 
 source ; but if the chords be harshly struck, — as, alas ! they too 
 frequently are, — what wonder that they are dissonant, crackling, 
 harsh and grating? The wonder is that they are not more so. 
 The human being, but civilized woman especially, is 
 
 A harp for angels' fingers strung, 
 While colder hands are o'er it flung, 
 And only broken strains are sung. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, JXD MAHBIAGE. 131 
 
 "Woman, standing everywhere as the synonyme of gentle- 
 ness, tenderness, affection, and trust, should be treated accord- 
 ingly. Even the harlots who infest the purlieus are women 
 still, and therefore deserve just such treatment as Christ gave 
 them, — not such as they receive from most of those who claim 
 to be his followers. A very intelligent physician in Xew 
 England once said, in a speech, that he could imagine such a 
 thing as a virtuous prostitute. His opinion was, doubtless, 
 predicated on the fact that very few people in this world are 
 exactly at heart what circumstances compel them to be exter- 
 nally. Take it as a general thing, harlots are denounced the 
 loudest by those who have fallen in God's sight, not only 
 lower, but ten times to the harlot's once ! That's gall ; but 
 true, nevertheless. 
 
 Deep down in every Cj'prian heart, far away beneath the 
 physical structure which poverty, the biting north wind and 
 wintry tempest, shelterless head and griping hunger compels 
 them to barter off piecemeal to ready purchasers, there lies a 
 pearl of great price ; just such pearls, sir or madam, as shine 
 in the coronet of heaven, and sparkle in your little daughter's 
 breast. True, it is soiled, yet still it is a pearl ! 
 
 Every one of these " social evils" has an immortal soul to be 
 washed clean in the infinite stream of God's great river of 
 mercy ! Every one of them can feel; the}' dare not stop to 
 think, — for to think is madness, madness ! and they have a 
 boundless capacity to love, — love purely, too, which proves 
 that God has neither driven them from beneath the brooding 
 wings of mercy, or cast them off forever, forgotten ; nor 
 despised them. Why, then, should we ? Why should anybody ? 
 It strikes the writer that many a respectable person who sees 
 these women going to ruin, yet are so full of " damning " as to 
 have no time to save them, would, if analyzed in heaven's 
 alembic, not yield so much pure human gold as would man} T of 
 these fallen ones ! That's wormwood ! 
 
 Woman is more easily affected lyy climatic and atmospheric 
 changes than man, especially American women. These changes, 
 affecting the body, react on the mind, and for this reason her 
 
132 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAPItTAGE. 
 
 morbid nerves are rendered still more so, and hence her social, 
 domestic, and personal difficulties are magnified greatly be} r ond 
 their true proportions ; they loom up as mountains when, 
 were the truth known, they would prove to be very dimin- 
 utive mole-hills. Restore her physically, and you will enable 
 her to look through a glass not so darkly. 
 
 The reason why prostitutes die so soon, and many honest 
 wives drop into early graves, is because there is no soul in the 
 sort of love they give and receive, — it is physical solely, and 
 therefore most terribly exhausting. All love between man and 
 woman shouM be holy, true, and sacred, otherwise the invisible 
 Damoclean sword hangs over them both ; and it will assuredly 
 fall some day, and then, when it is too late, both will bitterly 
 repent their shortsightedness. The woman who is physically 
 loved only, is sure to languish, grow sickly, pale, querulous, 
 impatient, fretful, haggard, emaciated and discontented, and 
 finally demoralized ; while the husband suffers to an equal 
 degree, but in a different direction. He grows hard, harsh, 
 careless, and entertains thoughts not good for his soul ! The 
 children of such couples are one-sided, deformed in mind, and, 
 literally, are not half made up. Such people change from July 
 to January, towards each other, within the space of a single 
 hour, and they see far more of wintry than of summer weather 
 during life. 
 
 Extremes abound in the world. We have the Isolation sys- 
 tem of Shakerism on one side, and the " Freedom " of Noyes 
 and Andrews on the other ; while there is a third class, led by 
 fanatics of New England, who declare that human commerce is 
 on a par with that of field or farm-yard beasts. Such reasoners 
 deserve no better audience than the farm-yards produce, for cer- 
 tainly they are not fit to teach human beings, seeing that com- 
 mon sense, no less than common custom, since the world began, 
 gives them and their reasonings the lie ; for the reason that 
 beasts are blindly led by the procreative instinct ; while man- 
 kind being a triplicate, soul, spirit, body, is moved by corre- 
 sponding triplicate motives or impulses — or should be, at 
 all events, but too often is not. First, the selfish desire of 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAXRTAGE. 133 
 
 personal joy ; and all marriages consummated on such grounds, 
 rnainby, — and many such there be, — can but result in un- 
 happiuess, — the marry-in-haste-repent-at-leisure affairs which 
 abound on all sides. The man whose principal merit lies 
 in his merely physical energy and prowess soon renders him- 
 self distasteful, to even a coarse wife, and unendurable and dis- 
 gusting to a refined one. The woman whose chief recommen- 
 dations are her physical charms, would very soon exhaust the 
 patience of even the archangel Michael, much more a common 
 son of clay, and speedily find herself a "grass widow" of the 
 true New England, Californian, or Australian stamp. 2d. 
 Mankind, like brutes, are moved by this external, or mere 
 blood-fire, and also by the higher, and mental motives of the 
 deeper soul, which beasts are not. And, 3d, last, highest, man- 
 kind are moved in the direction indicated, by the religious 
 desire of interchange of immortal well-meaning and good, — 
 above, beneath, and between souls as well as grosser selves ; — 
 a love all truly human. For this reason the man is truly a fool 
 who places the human marriage union on a par with that of 
 brutes. He can be nothing but a fool, or knave, who asserts 
 that propagation alone should draw people together ; for if the 
 world should never be peopled, save by those brought here by 
 rule and plummet law — by intention and purpose, — a la army 
 contract, — then this world would not be crowded very fast, and 
 Malthus dance with joy ! 
 
 Too much of a good thing palls the taste ; and so, too, if a 
 couple who really love each other make fools of themselves on 
 that account, and neglect their physical interests, they will find 
 it don't pay in the long run ; for after a while the supplies will 
 be cut off; for as said before, love can be wasted just as can 
 the saliva by tobacco-chewers, or nerve-force by drunkards. 
 
 Rapid Americans are an fait in the art of destroying life, 
 especially by gustatory and other excess, but are not remark- 
 ably efficient in the modes of preserving and prolonging it. In 
 fact there's a national leakness, and a national weakness too. 
 To stop the former and correct the latter is up-hill work, yet it 
 can be done. How many wives are yearly immolated, how 
 
134 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 many husbands destroy themselves on that one accursed altar ! 
 — for abused, it is a curse ! 
 
 Disease, sin, and civilization travel together, — at least they 
 have till to-night ; but there comes a divorcing morrow. Why ? 
 Because the first two are parasites of the last, which last, when 
 washed clean in the river of common sense, a rare old bath, 
 will undoubtedly make things all right again ; and then no 
 longer will blackmail be levied by disease on the universal 
 species. 
 
 Modern diseases and the dreadful and prevalent voluptuous- 
 ness come of the same mother ; banish the latter and the for- 
 mer will disappear forever, never again to fever mankind and 
 curse the species. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Divorces are quite too common in these days. Many a man 
 and woman worry each other's lives out in the hope of driving 
 their marital team through that gate. Were marriages indis- 
 soluble, then, people finding that they must either lie quietly 
 on the bed themselves have voluntarily made, or else not lie at 
 all, would take good care to render it soft as possible, both for 
 the partner and self. But just so long as there is the least 
 chance for a legal separation, just so long there will be a 
 premium on adultery and ill-usage. If divorce was impossible, 
 there would be fewer of the " if-marriage-is-disagreeable, di- 
 vorce-is-easy unions," so common in these clays. 
 
 Disorders of mind and body are transmitted through scores 
 of generations ; and we of this age have not only to pay for our 
 own sins, but must also wipe out a long score run up years, ay, 
 centuries ago, by our jolly wassail-drinking ancestors. We 
 have to face the music and pay the fiddler for their dancing, 
 just as our successors will pay and damn us for ours. The 
 disorders of to-day unquestionably spring from the waste of 
 strength and loss of stamina consequent upon infractions of the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 135 
 
 human love law, with false modes of life, and the indiscriminate 
 use and abuse of functions bestowed on the race for very dif- 
 ferent purposes. 
 
 When men and women learn the grand law of self-conserva- 
 tion in the matter of love alone, they will be forever happy, 
 because then disease can no more remain man's scourge than 
 holiness can exist in Gehenna ! 
 
 Many so-called "medical professors " are not seldom regular 
 numskulls ; as a general thing they fret and fume at their ina- 
 bility to master diseases, especially such as afflict women. The 
 cause of their failure is, that they attempt to go too deep ; they 
 fancy that the fountain lies afar off in the intricacies of physi- 
 cal being, when, in fact, it lies right square before them, as has 
 been shown. The}* - doctor effects ; causes go untouched. Medi- 
 cal science (surgery aside) is very unscientific after all ; there's 
 too much guess-work about it. The Spaniard's epitaph is true 
 of more dead men and women than himself: — 
 
 " I was sick — wanted to get well, 
 Took physic — and — here I am " — 
 
 Six feet beneath the surface of his mother-earth's bosom. 
 
 The consumptions, dyspepsias, liver-diseases, syphilitic affec- 
 tions, epilepsy, fits, neuralgias ; female difficulties, as chlorosis, 
 rheumatism, gout, fallen womb, leucorrhea, piles, headache, 
 suppressed menses, flooding, together with seminal weakness, 
 nightly perspiration, cancer, and ulcerations of all sorts, in- 
 cluding all scrofulous affections, — are the curses of this -age ; 
 they are treated in the wrong way, and the remedies are often 
 worse than the diseases in their effects upon the patients, and 
 their patience ! True : admit that all the above, except the 
 fourth, are mainly external proofs of internal mental . bad 
 states, but the author of this work does not believe it possible 
 for those diseases to exist in the home where pure love reigns, 
 any more than for ice to exist in a heated furnace, because love 
 antagonizes them, and they cannot remain ; yet, for all that, 
 nature needs art's assistance to restore the proper balance. 
 
136 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 The writer hereof has no faith whatever in lust, in any form, 
 but he does own to a mighty confidence in the Love-C ore, — 
 the means above all others to which resort all mothers, brute, 
 or human alike, whenever the young one is sick c 1 ' imperilled. 
 See that young matron ! how tenderly she rubs the little bruised 
 nose, and breathes upon the precious burnt fingers ! Why, 
 even yonder old blue hen is au fait in the sublime mysteries of 
 the love-cure ! Just mark how tenderly she broods her chicks 
 when they are wet and cold. Well, we humans are all chickens 
 when we are sick, and need just such brooding in order to get 
 well. When we are well we need just such brooding by our 
 wives, sisters, brothers, and husbands to keep us so. 
 
 It has, reader, already been stated in this work — the crys- 
 tallized results or resume of a life's experience — that love, both 
 in its phases of sentiment and passion of the human soul and 
 body too, is, to a greater extent than superficial people will 
 readily believe, or, indeed, are capable of doing, dependent 
 upon the absence or presence, in greater or less volume, of a 
 peculiar nerve-aura which is elaborated within the body, but 
 actually ranging and circulating over and through the very 
 soul itself. Very much, nay, even more depends upon the truly 
 healthy or unhealtlvy state of that aura than ' upon its amount 
 or volume ; for in that, as in all things else, quality ranks quan- 
 tity. This aura, by reason of its magnetic nature, — for it 
 attracts and repels, — has herein been called plrysical love, for 
 one reason, among others, that oxen, eunuch-dogs, and human 
 eunuchs have it not ; nor does airy emasculant emit the sphere 
 resulting from its presence, which sphere in animals takes the 
 form of an odor which influences the female of the same spe- 
 cies, but which in the human being assumes the form of a 
 delicate, subtile, magnetic, glowing sphere or emanation, capable 
 of being distinctly sensed by all persons whatever, and which, 
 when thus sensed, makes us say that such and such a person is 
 quite lovable ; and when it is not sensed we say such a person 
 is hateful ; and we often apply even worse terms than that. Now 
 one great essential to a successful and happy love-life is that 
 this sphere be kept right, and to do that we must eat, drink, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 137 
 
 laugh, sing, and sleep well ; otherwise it becomes exhausted, 
 and we lose our power and personal force and influence in exact 
 proportion. Boy babies have more of a sphere which in other 
 years becomes changed into this aura than girls, up to their fourth 
 year ; consequently attract more notice, and are kissed oftenest. 
 But after that age, till death, the girls have it all their own way. 
 
 "When we are most healthful and true, both in bod\* and mind, 
 this aura is most plentiful and powerful. Music, dancing, sing- 
 ing, and very fervid preaching evokes its action ; it rages at 
 camp-meeting, flows in ball-rooms, leaps to life at singing- 
 parties, and abounds more where reserve is laid aside and aban- 
 don takes its place ; hence, must be watched, for but very few 
 men, and less women, are able to withstand its tide and sug- 
 gestions, when it flows strongly ; for it has very often swept 
 even many a right reverend father in God down the wind when 
 blowing fairly on him from the outside, and met with an equally 
 vehement tide evolved from within. All this is chemical, but a 
 chemistry finer than what passes by that name. 
 
 Nothing but cool will can stay it ; nothing but calm reason 
 direct its highest mode of use. 
 
 This aura is of varied degrees of intensity. It radiates from 
 our ej'es, features, face, fingers, our entire bodies, just as heat 
 does from a stove or grate. Let those who doubt this just note 
 the exhaustion consequent upon holding the hands of a sick 
 person, especially if that person be of the opposite sex, and 
 one of those who plod broken-hearted on their way through the 
 world, hungry for love, starving for three grains of affection. 
 
 In his day the writer has seen many persons, particularly 
 females, who practice " clairvoyance," and who " sit for com- 
 munications," and the majority were literally used up, because 
 they were sympathetic, and hence easily drained, through hand- 
 holding and tactual impression, of their last drop of vitality, 
 the last spark of love-fire in their bodies. What wonder, then, 
 that many such people soon degenerate physically, grow queer, 
 eccentric, deranged, morbidly sensitive, and melancholy? None 
 whatever. 
 
 The love-cure is performed rapidly or not. in exact ratio of 
 
138 WOMAN, LOVE,. AND MAURI AGE. 
 
 the moral purity and physical health of the operator. A bad 
 man or woman ma}' be healed by this process ; but they must 
 first become pure themselves ere they attempt to heal others. 
 The love-cure is higher than mere mesmerism, for it acts 
 magnetically, electrically, chemically, emotionally, and dynam- 
 ically. 
 
 When such a vast amount of illness exists from afFectional 
 causes, how exceedingly absurd it is to attempt to cure them 
 solely by mere medicinal means ! How well Shakespeare under- 
 stood this idea, when he makes the conscience-smitten Macbeth 
 exclaim : — 
 
 " Canst thou minister to a mind diseased; 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain 
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the foul bosom of the perilous stuff 
 That weighs upon the heart? " 
 
 No. It cannot be done ; and if we would have the body right, 
 the affections must be right also, and to do that we must be just 
 and true, and kind and loving to ourselves and one another. 
 
 Many a man has only found out how well, how truly, wholly, 
 fully, and how tenderly he loved his wife, at the dread moment 
 when the death-angel hovered near her pillow, ready to bear 
 her soul to God ; and then, when the ice around his heart has 
 melted, and he has discovered how priceless she was, how 
 supremely near and dear, — that after all she was something 
 higher, nobler, better, than a mere pleasure-barge, — has the power 
 and the will gone forth on the love-tides of his soul to beat back 
 Azrael, and recall her into life again ; then has love worked 
 such miracles as made the doctors gape with surprise at his 
 power and their impotency. This is the love-cure, and by it 
 a man may heal his scrofulous and nerve-sick wife, and the 
 mother save her darling babe. Through it a husband or wife 
 may cure not merely the physical, but the passional and moral 
 ills of the partner ; all that is requisite is purpose, practice, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 139 
 
 perseverance. These three will rescue from the grave, yearly, 
 millions of suffering people. 
 
 . But there is one drawback to this system of treatment, which 
 is, that men are generally so morbid that they cannot mingle 
 in woman's sphere without being tortured with the hadean 
 flames of unhallowed passion. There are a few who are su- 
 perior, but these are exceptions to the rule. 
 
 Reader, if you know a man, woman, or child sick with 
 scrofula, or anything else, make it your business to render 
 them as happy as possible t Do this, especially if the patient's 
 brain, affections, or reason either, is affected, and in a short 
 time you will reap a golden fruitage for j^our labor. 
 
 Perhaps those who read this book when the hand that pens 
 it shall be cold in death, and the soul that thought it is basking 
 in God's sunshine on the farther shore, will not take it amiss 
 if he here expresses in plain terms one of the most momentous 
 truths in the love line he, or any one else, ever discovered. It 
 is this : Every disease that may be lurking away down in the 
 very deeps and intricacies of your body, or that may be slyly 
 hiding in some mysterious recess or nook of your physical, or 
 even mental part, are all emboldened to come out and take 
 their places in the train whereof amative passion is not only 
 engineer and fireman, but conductor also, who has called them 
 all from their places by lateral-lines — the nervous and other 
 centres — to the grand depot. Now this conductor understands 
 his business perfectly ; and is so absolutely wide awake, as to 
 never miss an opportunity of summoning the largest possible 
 representative delegation to go on his train to the amatory 
 congress. When the trip is over and journey completed, both 
 cars and conductor go back again, but the delegates always re- 
 main; and every one of them, be their names Scrofula, Con- 
 sumption, Dropsy, Insanity, or whatsoever else, will, in time, 
 you may depend upon it, be sure to be seen, heard, and felt 
 from the tribune of the children's bodies and souls who may 
 thereafter claim you as parent. 
 
 But are people who are victims to disease.— except madness — 
 x> be utterly debarred from love, home, and its joys ? Reply, 
 
140 WOMAX, LOVE, AND \t Mi MAGE. 
 
 No. Your only hope of escape from making marriage suicide 
 and murder in the softer sense, and from transmitting the curse 
 to posterity, consists in the valiant exercise of Try, and thereby 
 so completely charging every drop of } T our blood with health ; 
 and how to do that is, throw physic to the dogs, — but they'll 
 have none of it, sensible brutes ! — and address yourself to 
 the sole business of crystallizing within you a triple portion of 
 right-down honest, manly, womanly, noble, unselfish, self- 
 restraining human love, right out of the heart, from the floors 
 of the soul. A child born of sickly parents, in whose hearts 
 love is a mountain, forgets to bring disease with him when he 
 comes here from God to gladden the faces of men ; and he, or 
 she, is born with many foes perhaps, but with one powerful 
 friend, not easily discouraged, in the shape of a good constitu- 
 tion ! — a friend who will stick by, and be right side forward 
 when most needed. 
 
 Most children are accidents. What then ? Why, be ever on 
 the safe side, nor run the chance of such " accidents," unless 
 soul, body, mind, and morals be in such a normal state that none 
 but good results can follow. No one on God's earth has the 
 right to run the risk of a bad accident. Enough said on that 
 point, — a word to the wise is sufficient. If, on the contrary, 
 love be ignored, denied, cast aside, and its counterfeits be 
 encouraged and cherished, and their forces only be brought into 
 play, — as is, alas, too often the case in these da}?s, — and married 
 people go on in the present style, giving criminals and monsters 
 to the world, instead of healthful offspring, — children whose 
 chief end will be the bringing of gray heads with sorrow to the 
 grave, why, whose fault is it? 
 
 The great lesson of life is self denial — the accrement of 
 temptation-resistant power. Few successfully learn it. Civ- 
 ilized mankind are very weak. We swear to "go and sin no 
 more," and ten to one we straightway go and sin ; and then, 
 when sorrow comes, and the music must be paid for, feel sorry, 
 whine a little, forget all about it, do it over, burn our fingers — 
 and repent again ! We start out on a pleasure-voyage, hoping 
 we shall be able to visit all the pleasant lands on the sea of 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 141 
 
 life ; we put a blind man on the lookout, and a fool at the 
 helm ; we never once look aloft to see how the wind blows, or 
 to note the signs of the weather ; we are seldom on deck, but 
 our time is passed down below, in the pleasant business of play- 
 ing pleasure-cards ; we take a trick or two and smile at our 
 luck, wholly forgetting that our bitter, though smiling foe — 
 moral, social, physical, mental, affectional bankruptcy — holds 
 all four aces, three- kings, two queens and every knave, ready to 
 table them against us and sweep the board whenever it suits 
 him so to do ! And still on goes the losing game, until at last 
 the bark strikes the rocks ; we are ashore on the island of Used- 
 upness, the game's up, we are played out — and that's the way 
 the queer thing works ! 
 
 Said the " Chicago Republican," " Lo, the poor Indian, whose 
 untutored mind devotes itself to trapping the bounding cricket 
 and chasing the angle-worm to his native lair in the sublime 
 fastnesses of Puget Sound, has taught us, the heirs of all the 
 ages, a lesson ! The moment that one noble savage, baser than 
 all his tribe, becomes the father of twins, he is torn from his 
 young barbarians, all at play, placed in a canoe, with a shingle 
 and earth-worm sandwich, and turned adrift on the river, a 
 Malthusian scape-goat. For three months he roams the woods, 
 an exile from his home. The consequence is, that the popula- 
 tion is kept down. The Zoozoo Mynnggpoo tribe of Caffres 
 have also developed a high standard of civilization. No sooner 
 has one of their number wedded the sable Dulcinea of his 
 choice than the face of his mother-in-law is to him taboo. If 
 he gazes upon her, 'twere better that he had met the strong 
 glare of Medusa. The consequence is, that matrimony is not 
 over-frequent, or, that if a man does wed, he selects the first 
 favorable opportunity of staining the arid sands of the desert 
 with the blood of his mother-in-law- "Will the great American 
 nation permit itself to be outdone in boldness by the squalid 
 son of the Squally ainish, or a benighted Zoozoo from Afric's 
 sunny fountains ? We trow not." 
 
 That would be rather rough on the mothers-in-law, but a great 
 many of them are so inconsiderate of a husband's rights and a 
 
142 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 wife's duty as to render home a hell to both ; and while the 
 author's love for mothers-in-law is not of the desperately ardent 
 kind, his pity for their dupes and victims is so. And yet here 
 and there is to be found one truly a mother in every holy and 
 excellent sense of the word. God bless all such ! And still 
 another — the Son-in-Law : — 
 
 "He stood on his head on the wild sea-shore, 
 And danced on his hands a jig ! 
 In all his emotions, as never before, 
 A madly hilarious grig. 
 
 " And why? In that vessel which left the bay 
 His mother-in-law had sailed 
 To a tropical country some distance away, 
 Where tigers and serpents prevailed. 
 
 " He knew she had gone to recruit her health 
 And doctor her rasping cough ; 
 But wagered himself a profusion of wealth 
 That something would carry her off. 
 
 " Oh, now he might look for a <miet life, 
 And even be happy yet, 
 Though owning no end of neuralgical wife, 
 And up to his collar in debt ! 
 
 " For she of the specs and curled false front, 
 And the black alpaca robe, 
 Must pick out a sailor to suffer the brunt 
 Of her next daily trial of Job. 
 
 " He watched while the vessel cut the sea, 
 And bumpishly upped and downed, 
 And thought if already she qualmish could be 
 He'd consider the edifice crowned ! 
 
 " He'd borne the old lady through thick and thin, 
 Till she'd lectured him out of breath ; 
 And now, as he gazed at the ship she was in, 
 He howled for her violent death, — 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 143 
 
 1 ' Till over the azure horizon's edge 
 The bark had retired from view, 
 When he leaped to the crest of a chalky ledge, 
 And pranced like a kangaroo. 
 
 " And many a jubilant peal he sent 
 
 O'er the waves which had made him free ; 
 Then cut a last caper ecstatic, and went, 
 Turning somersaults, homeward to tea." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The difference between species is only a difference in the 
 arrangement of particles ; and the difference between human 
 beings is nothing more, nothing less ! Thus in a line is solved 
 the problem of the ages, — one that has probably called forth 
 more brain-effort than any other in natural history, and led 
 Darwin to astound the world of letters with his " Origin of 
 Species." The differences between people are only the differences 
 of sounds. People don't understand each other, especially 
 lovers and married ones, and they won't take the trouble to try 
 to, and so get by the ears, and quarrel and part and make 
 fools of themselves, merely because their ears don't interpret 
 sounds alike. One won't, or don't, understand what the other 
 means. Now love is a sound that all do not interpret alike. 
 ; 'I love you," said John to Joanna; "will you have me?" 
 "Yes!" A little while afterward Joanna said, "If that is 
 love, I want no more of it ! It may be love down below, but 
 certainly can't be among the angels ! " "What a pity words are 
 distorted by the sounds that express them ! 
 
 Satiety in a natural marriage is not possible; true love is 
 inexhaustible. But then, true love's major element is com- 
 mon sense — which is quite uncommon. 
 
 To a husband : Be delicate, sir ; never, never, expose her in 
 any way. Even in the dreadful hour of childbirth remember 
 this. Procure a female doctor. Never call a male until the 
 
144 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 last hope is nearly gone. If she lives, she will love j'ou all the 
 better for your kind consideration. 
 
 To a lover : Women that are the least bashful are not un- 
 frequently the most modest ; and we are never more deceived 
 than when we would infer a laxit}' of principles from that free- 
 dom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of 
 vice. 
 
 Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare ; but 
 jealousy may and does exist without love, and this is common. 
 
 Though sometimes small evils, like invisible insects, inflict 
 pain, and one little single hair may stop a vast machine, yet 
 the chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex 
 one, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small 
 pleasures, since very few great ones, alas ! are let on long 
 leases. 
 
 When a woman speaks with contempt of the opinions of the 
 world, it argues in her neither good feeling, cleverness, nor true 
 courage. True courage (in a woman) consists in at once giving 
 up what may be agreeable and innocent in itself, rather than 
 risk having one's good name called in question. 
 
 How difficult it is, with the best intentions, for a woman who 
 lives in the world to steer entirely clear of suspicion or misrep- 
 resentation, unless there exists between herself and her hus- 
 band a frank and cordial understanding ! 
 
 Every man knows the height of virtue to which he may 
 attain ; but no man can anticipate the depth of depravity to 
 which he may fall. Singeth a poet : — 
 
 " Love me, love me while you may, 
 Take the love I bring to-day, 
 
 Plead not for to-morrow ; 
 So warm, so bright, so near, so high, 
 It is the sun that gilds the sky ; 
 
 Cloud it not with sorrow. 
 
 " Shall my lips refuse thy kiss, 
 Though its deep, exquisite bli' 
 Fade the moment after? 
 
WOMAK, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 145 
 
 Storms arise and clouds may lower, 
 Shall the earth refuse its dower, 
 Joy, and light, and laughter ? 
 
 " Then take the love that's mine to give, 
 I know not if it may outlive 
 
 The rainbow's fleeting splendor ; 
 But well I know this heart is warm 
 As any, quick to meet the storm, 
 
 And full as soft and tender. 
 
 " But if our love should fade away, 
 We'll hold it, like an April day ; 
 
 Its glory still remember. 
 And ne'er be weak enough to sigh, 
 As oft we pass each other by, 
 
 For roses in December." 
 
 The entire being is dependent upon the condition of the love- 
 system of either sex. As previously stated, so now the asser- 
 tion is repeated, that the love-element — the fine fluid-liquid, 
 liquid-fluid, elaborated in the manner so frequently alluded to, 
 is in very truth the genitive part, the fountain of life, primum 
 vivens, ultimum moriens; is, in fact, the very material and 
 fountain whence arises all power, mental and physical, that man 
 possesses, while embodied here below. 
 
 Well, there are cases constantly occurring, wherein, from 
 causes needless here to specify, persons of either sex become 
 wholly sapped, worn out, exhausted, depleted ; and as a matter 
 of course such persons run to a physician, expecting, and 
 vainly, relief from that source. Now, if instead of resorting to 
 medicines such persons would drink and eat purely protoplas- 
 mic food, eschewing condiments, wines, and all excitants, but 
 especially taking to the richer cereals in natural shape, with due 
 attention to bathing, lifting, chest-expanding, self-slapping, 
 bending, twisting, deep-breathing, the result would be an 
 extraordinary recovery. This advice is especially applicable to 
 pale, thin, delicate women, and to sedentary, nervous men. With 
 their physical, will also revive their lost, or deadened affectional 
 
146 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 powers, and into their souls will flow, along with health into 
 their bodies, a peace which almost passeth understanding. 
 
 The functions of the distinct special organization of both 
 sexes are nearly identical. The human being probably comes 
 originally from God as a monad, down to the male (speaking 
 of the nrystery — soul) , passes to the brain centre, clothes 
 itself from the substance of his spirit; passes thence to the 
 prostate; there remains until it finds another garment — the 
 minute head of a zoosperm, in the ultimate rite of incarnation. 
 Up to this instant its life is nascent, and though it be now 
 ivasted, it can never be destroyed; but, escaping its thrall, again 
 becomes a free monad, floating about in open space, until it 
 again becomes incarnate, and finally achieves the end for which 
 Eternal God designed it. Up to a certain point, then, its life is 
 negative ; but at the very instant it — the monad — comes in 
 contact with the divine, immortal point concealed in every 
 female ovum, its life becomes positive, and whosoever then 
 destroys it, after the mother-force has once fairly closed upon 
 it, is a murderer ! — and so the writer hereof pronounces in 
 the awful presence of Almighty Truth herself! — a murderer — 
 just as certainly as if a knife were used to deprive a grown 
 human being of his or her life. 
 
 So much for that point ; now for another. It is no rare thing 
 to find both men and women in whom love and love-power are 
 either wholly dead, or wrapt in such profound slumber that the 
 thunders of Sinai would be powerless to wake them from it. It 
 need not be said, for the fact is patent, that such fearful results 
 are the legitimate effects of false, lonely, excessive, or inverted 
 modes of life and habit. Such a man, or such a woman, while 
 in sueh an atonic state, count but as mere* pawns, and poor ones 
 at that, in the great chess-game of actual social life. A female 
 thus conditioned — Heaven pity, and God bless and help her ! — is 
 not herself at all, — is but the mere semblance and unsubstan- 
 tial shadow of what her form represents. To her love is the 
 seventh sealed book ; nor has such a woman any more actualiz- 
 ation of what love really means, than has an unborn child. 
 
 In consequence of this connubial iciness, this chronic con- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 147 
 
 gelation of love on the part of a husband, a condition and state 
 of things by no means rare, many a wife has had bitter cause to 
 rue the day she ever spoke the words, " I will," — which really 
 was sentencing herself to disease, disaster, despair, desolation, 
 and death — five d's — bad ones, and in consequence of the 
 same condition on the part of a wife, full many a man has been 
 rendered unhappy, and finally supremely miserable, because his 
 wife is an utter stranger to the slightest conjugal reciprocit}*. 
 Fruitage : Disgust on one side, distempered feelings on the 
 other. The cure : TRY to overcome the condition. How ? By 
 rules already laid down herein. 
 
 Of course it does not lie within the province of this book or 
 its author's present design, nor comport with the dignity of his 
 present intention, to enter more fully than has been done, into 
 a discussion of the physiological reasons for, nor the hygienic 
 treatment of, such states, for those special topics lie outside the 
 current object ; however, physicians, and indeed any one else 
 who desires to learn a s}'stem of medical treatment adapted to 
 cases originating in amative causes, are at liberty to correspond 
 with him on that subject — and that only. Let this be known, 
 nevertheless, that the author considers that not the slightest de- 
 gree of confidence whatever is to be placed in any one of almost 
 innumerable statements and fine-spun quack-theories of the 
 matter, so numerously championed in these days of medical 
 fraud and philosophic empiricism ; but the healing of all such 
 life-troubles must be applied mainly from within, never wholly 
 from without. Suffice it then to say, that he or she, no matter 
 whom, who suffer unrest from the pauses here hinted at as deli- 
 cately as possible, must look almost wholly to themselves for 
 power to overcome the great obstacle to their happiness ; for 
 there, and there only, can it be found, maugre all that un- 
 principled quack-nostrum venders, whether within or without 
 the pale of " medical respectability," may urge to the contrary. 
 Of course reference is here made solely to those cases which 
 are the result of mental and aflectional causes, and not to those 
 which wholly originate in a physically impaired chemistry of 
 the human body, reacting upon the human mind, for of course 
 
148 • WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the two are neither equal, parallel, or extirpable by identical 
 means. 
 
 Young men, ay, and men old enough to know better, are, 
 as a general thing, in these days, in love affairs, altogether too 
 fast. Many a girl and woman has been frightened out of 
 marriage by the excessive animalism of their gallants, for lovers 
 they are not worthy to be called. Such persons lose sight of 
 the principal charms of woman in the mere idea of sex alone ; 
 they are eaten up with wild ideas and mad desire, in con- 
 sequence of which they totally forget that a steady dignity of 
 the mind and demeanor can alone counterbalance the extreme 
 action of any of the passions, especially the one of which we 
 at present treat. The great mass of people seem to be unaware 
 that a pure and perfect love cannot exist in one who is filled 
 with the fires of mere physical ardor, or in a heart that has 
 lost the true and meek dignity of innocence, manliness, and 
 truth ! 
 
 The large volume preceding this one, on the same subject, 
 " Love : its Hidden History ! and the Master Passion," by 
 the same author, has had a large circulation, and as the writer 
 allowed his address to be printed in it, a great deal of corre- 
 spondence was the consequence. And now, on this very day, 
 just as the preceding page was written, the mail brought one 
 letter, among others, so touching in its eloquence, so fresh from 
 an injured and suffering woman's heart, and so very apropos 
 to the phase of love now under discussion, that — the identity 
 of the fair writer and mailing-place being kept secret and 
 sacred — the impulse to print it, word for word, cannot be re- 
 sisted. It is but one of a thousand of the same import re- 
 ceived by the author of this work, and if its publication shall 
 put even one pure and trusting woman on her guard, or 
 awaken the conscience of some man as he stands upon the de- 
 batable land, — honor on one side and errant, impulsive in- 
 justice on the other, — and cause him to nobly be a Man and do 
 Right, the purpose of its insertion in these pages will have been 
 served. The letter tells its own sad story without any ad- 
 ditional explanations whatever : — 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 149 
 
 "B e, July 6th, 1871. 
 
 " Dear Sir : — I beg pardon for again intruding on your 
 time. I have just read the concluding pages of ' Love ' and 
 the*' Master Passion,' and, with a heart thrilling with grateful 
 emotion, offer my sincere thanks to the author of those pages 
 for what he has written. 
 
 " I have loved and suffered deeply, and it is sweet to know 
 that one man recognizes the truth that love is something more 
 than refined sensuality, — that a woman's life, hopes, happi- 
 ness, her all is ever laid on the altar of her love. 
 
 " In this connection I crave a few moments' indulgence. In 
 the habit of closely guarding my feelings from all observation, 
 I am forced to smile and utter light words when every nerve is 
 quivering with agony. The touch of sympathy renders it diffi- 
 cult to restrain this surging tide of feeling ; yet to none other 
 than the author of those pages would I, for a moment, unveil 
 my real feelings. "While reading, an almost irresistible desire 
 seized me, to dive, for once, deep into human S3 r mpath3^. But 
 what I could tell of the real joy and sorrow of life would fill a 
 volume. I know, by experience, there are heights of bliss and 
 depths of anguish in the human heart, an infinite God alone 
 can fathom. 
 
 " The fault with me is, nature gave me intense, acute, and 
 powerful feeling, with only the ordinary capacity of self-goA r - 
 ernment. When I wrote to you first, I was half maddened by 
 days of torture, and nights of sleepless pain, and, to have 
 obtained any trace of my absent friend, or reached his side, I 
 would have trampled down every barrier that pride, conven- 
 tionality, or reason could oppose. I know now that he is safe ; 
 that his silent absence is voluntary, and all that is left to me 
 now is the bitter task of crushing out the love that for a few 
 brief weeks made life so bright and beautiful, that, as I look 
 back, the days seem linked in golden bands. 
 
 " You tell me ' the sweets of one successful and happy love 
 will more than balance the account.' That is a dream of bliss, 
 that will never be realized. If any act of mine can make one I 
 love happier, and I am not denied the presence dearer than all 
 
150 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 else on earth, this is all of happiness for which I dare to hope. 
 I do not believe I ever awakened a genuine thrill of love in my 
 life, such as would satisfy the demands of my nature, and were 
 I unfortunately linked to one who gave me nothing more {ban 
 I have ever yet received, it would torture me to death or mad- 
 ness. And yet I have been happy ; but it was, as Hoyt says, 
 ' an hour of bliss, an age of pain.' Yet even this is far better 
 than not to love at all. I must love, though I can never be 
 beloved ; for it is not ouly more to me than all else in life, but 
 life itself. The tones of a loved voice send the warm blood 
 bounding through every artery ; the touch of a loved hand 
 thrills every nerve with electric power ; earth seems bathed in 
 glory, and heaven itself so near. Give me love, and though 
 every other earthly blessing be denied, life would be divine ; 
 deny me this, and Omnipotence can give me no equivalent. In 
 the thought of life without love, there is a sense of utter desola- 
 tion for which language has no expression 
 
 " Respectfully, ." 
 
 Not being able to copy the above letter himself, the author 
 handed it to a male friend, who kindly did so, at the same time 
 requesting him to give his opinion of the writer of it, — the man 
 who wronged her, — and the subject generally. He did so ; and 
 here is exactly what he wrote : — 
 
 " The purposes of Providence are worked out in wondrous 
 ways. The most painful event in any life may rear the 
 eminence from which, with a clearer vision we may look out upon 
 beauties never dreamed of else, reveal passions, depths, and 
 longings, that but for it would have never thrilled our souls. 
 
 " Such experiences as this woman has realized are but too 
 frequent ; and my heart trembles as I think of the intensity of 
 the agony to one so finely Strang, so sensitive. "Would that 
 there were a scarcity of the soulless monsters who pride them- 
 selves upon such victories ! 
 
 " A great principle is vividly impressed upon my mind by 
 this lady's letter ; i. e., that Love is the natural and the sole 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 151 
 
 object and principle, the only thing in life, both present and 
 future. It is the supreme passion ; all others are secondary and 
 auxiliaiy, and become morbid and perverted in proportion to 
 its absence from the throne of the human soul. It is soul it- 
 self; it is God in us, and only a serpent that has dragged his 
 slimy length from Eden to the gates of this true and womanly 
 heart can wound it. It does not die, it is immortal. There are 
 many calling themselves men, simulating what may have once 
 entitled them to that name, so far and successfully imitating 
 and personifying an ideal manhood, that showing themselves to 
 women who, like this one, have hearts, become at once the 
 objects of a homage due only to the noblest work of God, — an 
 honest man. 
 
 " These monsters, by various transformations and processes, 
 come gradually to be what they are. They are recruited from 
 that large class of transient persons who move from place to 
 place, travelling men, agents, drummers for mercantile houses. 
 These persons have no character to maintain, as they do not 
 stop long enough in one place to make it necessary. They take 
 their primary lessons from older members of the fraternity, and 
 from a certain class of mediums of both sexes. Beware of all 
 persons who have long been free from the influence of a home 
 and its restraints, — the hordes who live in furnished lodgings and 
 dormitories of large cities and towns on the European plan ! 
 Beware of all who shirk the duties of life and society, for they 
 gratify their perverted passions at the pain of those who unfor- 
 tunately have not a vigorous protection to shield them from the 
 advances of villains emboldened by success an hundred times ! 
 
 "At last, these conscienceless libertines fester upon the hard 
 pallet of a hospital, the charitj' of the civilization they have 
 outraged. No sweet and loving accents lull the roar of the 
 waters, no kind and loving hand smooths the hard pillow — 
 no ! they are dead long ago. Lips that would have spoken kind 
 words of hope, hands that would have borne them up, are silent, 
 cold, and palsied, deserted by them long ago ; and the}' die, 
 looking for love and tenderness into the face of a hired male 
 
152 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 attendant. God pity and forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do! T. H. C." 
 
 Haflz, the poet-king of Iran, has left some very suggestive 
 verses behind him, and these being patent to the issue shall be 
 now reproduced ; and here let it be said, once for all, that the 
 specious sophistry of these lines is identical with the foul stuff 
 foisted on the people of these current days, all championed as 
 Divine truth, under various names, as for instance, " The Schema- 
 tive Inorganicoid Aggregationalisms " of " Pantarch " Andrews ; 
 whereas, in reality, each one is a fanged and deadly serpent, lying 
 concealed therein, just exactly as one unquestionably is coiled up 
 in every line of Hafiz. The man or woman who listens to or 
 believes such monstrous folly is lost.- For it is by just such 
 wily devilism as the Persian's that the modern " Pantarchism," 
 "Free Love," and "Passional Attraction" infernalisms seek 
 to undermine public morals and private virtues in the phil- 
 anthropic endeavor to re-form society, and establish social order, 
 by making every man a libertine, and every woman a name- 
 less thing ! The best thing to do with such re-formers is to clap 
 them in lunatic asylums, or let them serve their age and gene- 
 ration by picking oakum, or cutting stone behind the bars of 
 county jails, or better still, State Prison ; because such people 
 when really honest are insane ; when not so they are villains of 
 unmistakable dye and calibre. Let us quote from their Persian 
 high priest, who thus sings : — 
 
 " What bliss is like to whispering love, 
 Or dalliance in the bowers of spring? 
 Why, then, delay my bliss to improve ? 
 Haste, haste, my love, the goblet bring. 
 
 " Each hour that joy and mirth bestow, 
 
 Call it treasure, count it gain ; 
 
 Fool is the man who seeks to know 
 
 His pleasure will it end in pain ! 
 
 M The links which our existence bind 
 Hang not by one weak thread alone ; 
 
woman; zofe, akd marriage. 153 
 
 Of man's distress why tease the mind? 
 Sufficient 'tis we know our own. 
 
 " The double charms of love and wine 
 Alike from one sweet source arise, 
 Are we to blame, shall we repine, 
 "When unrestrained the passions rise? 
 
 "If innocent in heart and mind, 
 I sin, unconscious of offence, 
 What use, O Casuist, shall I find 
 In Absolution's recompense ? 
 
 "Hermits the flowing spring approve ; 
 Poets the sparkling bowl enjoy; 
 And till he's judged by powers above, 
 Hafiz will drink and sing and toy ! " 
 
 " Ay, by my faith," he might have added, " and so will 
 everybody else as well as Hafiz," so long as mankind is as 
 morbid as we now find it, — which undoubtedly is a great deal 
 more so than in the far-off days of its ruonkej'-ape ancestry, 
 living on trees and sleeping in caves. As the species lives to- 
 day it laughs at the laws of its own making, and in amative 
 matters does just about as it pleases, and all despite my good 
 lord cardinal red, green or blue, priest or penalty, judges, justice, 
 or Boston juries, statute laws, rules, regulations, moral codes, 
 and everything else besides. And why? Because it is human 
 nature to do so ; perverted human nature truly, but human 
 nature still. The question, therefore, among people of common 
 sense at all events, is, not how we shall put a forcible stop to 
 " illicit amours," for we can't stop them, try as we may ; the 
 world has been essaying that enterprise these last ten thousand 
 years, leaving off just where it began the work, and not one 
 inch further. The reason is that civilized (?) man is wild, 
 silly, crazy, suicidal, and unhealthy in respect to his affections, 
 and just as long as the evil is uncorrected from the very founda- 
 tion, just so long will the trash foisted on the people by ranting 
 radicals, as divine science, be accepted as reformative gospel ; 
 and until men begin the work of self-restraint and redemption 
 
154 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 will such stuff as Hafiz wrote, and radicals and amazons pro- 
 claim and defend, be regarded as true poetry, and accepted as 
 genuine revelation. But the question is, how shall we get over 
 the difficulty in the easiest and safest way? It is of no use to 
 send a boy to State Prison because he is caught in a brothel. 
 You must first remove the brothel, and you can't do that until 
 you change the action of a certain little phrenological organ 
 situated at the nape of the neck of the Body Politic ! 
 
 How shall we discipline this universal organ of amativeness 
 so that it shall not run riot in the land, first making harlots, 
 then establishing brothels near every populous centre, and then 
 building prisons and houses of correction for its own victims ? 
 Bah ! The self-righteousness of legislators offends the nostrils 
 not only of God and angels, but of any honest man ! The 
 question of greatest moment to us is, how shall we so disci- 
 pline and train this unruty amativeness, so as to offend the 
 fewest, and benefit the many, help along the cause of the truest 
 civilization, and conduce to the best interests of the wide, wide 
 world ? That's the question ! That's the problem of the age, 
 one, too, that has puzzled the world for centuries, and yet one 
 that can be solved in twenty lines ; ay, half the number. 
 Thus : Prove to an} r one that interest, self-interest, has been, is, 
 and ever will be, the policy of men and nations, — a very easy 
 task with plenty of illustrations all around us, — then show 
 them that virtue is, and ever was, the highest interest of every 
 human being. Do this, and forthwith your work is done, and 
 harlotry goes by the board. This question must be met and 
 solved b}' the logic of facts and the principles of plaiu equity, 
 and genuine, non-subtle common sense ; which, after all, is a 
 great deal better fruit-bearer, of the right kind, than all the 
 grand and splendid sciento-philosophic trees that ever were 
 planted or grew ; for their apples are pretty to look at, but most 
 accursedly crabby when partaken of. 
 
 There's a fearful deal of cant and double-distilled hypocrisy 
 in the world to-day in regard to vice and virtue, but more con- 
 cerning their names than their principles, — for people do a, 
 mighty number of things to please themselves, without a 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 155 
 
 thought, which they -wouldn't be charged with by their names 
 for the world. For instance : The law-books tell us the crime 
 of rape is the forcible possession of an unwilling victim, the 
 just punishment for which, in some places, is death, and in all 
 long terms of imprisonment. Now suppose all, or even half, 
 of those who are guilty of it, should be accused, tried, and con- 
 victed, what a sight of married women — millions — would be 
 husbandless for many a long year ! And yei with how great 
 vigor is this amatoiy sin denounced, just as if actual crime were 
 sometimes more, sometimes less, blamable, or less a violence 
 than stealing, cheating, taking ten cents when six only are due, 
 and a hundred others which are not denounced half so strenu- 
 ously, nor taken advantage of by the very denouncers of this 
 sin of concupiscence. The fact is, wrong is wrong, whatever 
 shape it takes ; and there are but two divisions to crime of any 
 sort: One leads to murder, i. e., the injury of others ; and the 
 second leads to suicide, i. e., the injury of ourselves ; and it is 
 futile to attempt any reformation that does not begin with our- 
 selves first. True, the work belongs to society ; but then, 
 society is but an aggregation of separate individuals. It 
 scarcely does to fight one sin in detail, and let the rest grow ; 
 to cut down the thistles and leave the other weeds alone ; to 
 abjure one sin, and practise all the others. 
 
 Society is muddy all over, inside and out. It needs a thor- 
 ough overhauling from top to bottom ; that is to say, we each 
 for ourselves must begin, prosecute, and complete the work in 
 every personal case, and stop cursing and blaming others till 
 we do. 
 
 It is painful to people of correct thinking to witness the 
 social depravity of our times. They are all made sad by hear- 
 ing others — thousands of them — making such an ado about 
 marital, social, and other ills, yet practically doing nothing to 
 stem the torrent, or alter the condition of things. We all have 
 an abiding belief in virtue, and pay devout homage to it, when 
 clothed in linen and fine purple, but are very often unable to 
 see it when arrayed in linsey-woolsey, or worse gear. 
 
 There is an acceptation of the term virtue in vogue repulsive 
 
156 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 to a true man, especially when applied to all women indiscrimi- 
 nately ; for a woman in these days, hemmed in by poverty, may 
 be forced for dear life to do the wrong thing ; and others still, 
 by conglomerate circumstance, by the dire stress of influences 
 congenital and otherwise, over which she has no control what- 
 ever, may do things that in man's sight are sinful, but which 
 are not wholly so in the eye of the omnipotent God ! Ay, or in 
 that of an honest man or true woman. Go to ! Let him or 
 her who is without sin cast the first stone ! If they do, but few 
 will be bruised ! 
 
 Doubtless the reader has, ere this, clearly defined the differ- 
 ences between, and noticed the interchange of, the physiologi- 
 cal and the soul love. Both can and do exist, and act sepa- 
 rately ; but only when they move together like a beautiful pair 
 of milk-white coach-horses in double harness, do they amble us 
 along the bright gleaming roads on the happy side of life. 
 Such results, such a play of the double forces of love, can never 
 be hoped for, reached, or experienced outside of monogamic 
 marriage ; for howsoever content a man may be in double union, 
 or pluralism, or with one mistress only, there is always a 
 chronic spice of brimstone in the cup of life ; ever and always 
 some nameless longing and discontent ; nor can his joy ever 
 reach the height it would, had that sacred ceremony been per- 
 formed ; for it enables him to look the world plump and 
 squarely in the face, unabashed, and also in the mirror, when 
 he shaves, behold the beauties of an honest man ! If he has 
 children, it is a sweet morsel to roll under his tongue, — the con- 
 sciousness that they will not pass through the world branded 
 with the dreadful name, bastard ; for however keen and smart 
 such offspring may be, and notoriously are, it sounds better to 
 have that word unknown with respect to them ; besides which, 
 by the very fact of their keenness, such people suffer dread- 
 fully at the stigma, and their inability to respect the mother 
 who bore, and the father who begat them ! 
 
 No man can respect a mistress ! The thing's impossible ; no 
 matter how charming, talented, or beautiful she may be, the 
 first prime element of solid happiness is wanting ! • A mistress' 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, A\ r T) MARRIAGE. 157 
 
 joy is ever a fevery one, for she is conscious that her tenure 
 of possession is a very slender one, liable to be snapped asunder 
 by the slightest strain, or burnt in twain by the first pair of 
 bright eyes that may chance to flash out their fire upon him as 
 he passes by ; hence the life of a place is a life of constant un- 
 easiness, incertitudes, and excitements. Not so with an honest 
 wife ; for whatever storms may blow she commands and holds 
 the esteem of all the world ; for her wifehood, if not herself, 
 receives the undivided respect of the entire human race, of all 
 religions and of all lands ; while the known strumpet is by all 
 and everywhere despised, no matter how high she carries her 
 head ; for in that regard the mistress of an emperor is on a 
 common level with the outcast leman of a butcher-boy. 
 
 A nation's greatness depends upon the individual virtues and 
 nubile strength of its separate constituents, — upon those of 
 its people who are under forty years of age ; for before that age 
 they are parents of the next generation, or are not so at all. 
 Now the main element of vigor and virtue in any nation is that 
 necessarily resulting from amative purity ; for just as soon as 
 morals decay in that direction in the masses, the fall of that 
 nation is not far off. Witness ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, 
 Rome, Carthage, all of which went to irremediable ruin as a 
 direct consequence of social disorder in matters of sex. Among 
 modern nations the United States were shaken to their very 
 centre by the tremendous reaction against human slavery, 
 whose worst features were associated directly with sex matters, 
 — rape, concubinage — forced at that! — non-marriage, and 
 violent breakage of domestic ties, topped off with brutal usage, 
 public sales of fair women for base purposes, and often crowned 
 with, incest, — against all of which the human heart revolted, and 
 the thing was brought to an end in fire and blood ; whereby 
 human nature vindicated its better side ! 
 
 Treating of this very subject, in this very phase of it, an 
 article here quoted from the Bothwell, Canada, "Saturday 
 Review," in a paper on " Rome before the Caesars," says : — 
 
158 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 "It is a dreadful picture, — the picture of Italy under the rule of the 
 oligarchy. Morality and family life were treated as antiquated things 
 among the ranks of society. To be poor was not merely the saddest dis- 
 grace and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime. For 
 money the statesman sold the state and the burgess sold his freedom ; the 
 post of the officers and the vote of the jurymen were to be had for money; 
 for money the lady of quality surrendered her person, as well as the com- 
 mon courtesan ; perjuries and falsifying of documents had become so 
 common that in a popular part of this age an oath is called the ' plaster 
 for debts.' Men had forgotten what honesty was ; a person who refused a • 
 bribe was regarded, not as an honest man, but as a personal foe. 
 
 "But while at the bottom of national life the slime was thus constantly 
 accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more 
 smooth and glittering was the surface overlaid with the varnish of polished 
 manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits ; and 
 in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting 
 themselves every morning for the levee, in a certain order fixed by the 
 master or the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more 
 notable, one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted, partly 
 in groups, partly in a body, at the close. The interchange of letters of 
 courtesy was carried on to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy. 
 The genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally 
 vanished from the Rome of that day, that the whole intercourse of business 
 and acquaintance could be garnished with its forms and flourishes, which 
 had lost all meaning, and thus, by degrees, real friendship became super- 
 seded by that spectral shadow of friendship which holds by no means the 
 least place among the various evil spirits brooding over this age. 
 
 "An equally characteristic feature in the brilliant decay of this period 
 was the emancipation of women. In the economic point of view, the 
 women had long since made themselves independent. In the present epoch 
 we even meet with solicitors, acting especially for women, who officiously 
 lend their aid to the solitary rich ladies in the management of their prop- 
 erty and their lawsuits, make an impression upon them by their knowledge 
 of business and law, and thereby procure for themselves ampler perquisites 
 and legacies than other loungers on the exchange. But it was not merely 
 from the economic guardianship of fathers or husbands that women felt 
 themselves emancipated. Love intrigues of all sorts were constantly in 
 progress. The ballet-dancers were a match for those of the present day 
 in the variety of their pursuits and the skill with which they followed them 
 out. Their prima donnas pollute even the pages of history. But their, 
 as it were, licensed trade was very materially injured by the free art of the 
 ladies of aristocratic circles. Liaisons in the first houses had become so 
 frequent that only a scandal altogether exceptional could make them the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 159 
 
 subject of special talk. A judicial interference seemed now almost ridic- 
 ulous. The watering-place season, when political business was suspended 
 and the world of quality congregated at Baiai and Puteoli, derived its chief 
 charm from the relations, licit and illicit, which along with music and songs 
 and elegant breakfasts on board or on shore enlivened the gondola voyager. 
 There the ladies held absolute sway ; but they were by no means content 
 with this domain which rightfully belonged to them ; they also acted as 
 politicians, appeared in party conferences, and took part with their money 
 and their intrigues in the wild coterie proceeding of the time. 
 
 " Any one who beheld these female statesmen performing on the stage 
 of Scipio and Cato, and saw at their side the young fop, as with smooth 
 chin, delicate voice and mincing gait, with head-dress and neckerchiefs, 
 frilled robes and enormous sandals, he copied the loose courtesan, might 
 well have a horror of the unnatural worlds in which the sexes seemed as 
 though they wished to change parts. What ideas as to divorce prevailed 
 in the circles of aristocracy may be discerned in the conduct of their most 
 moral hero, Marcus Cato, who did not hesitate to separate from his wife at 
 the request of a friend desirous to marry her, and as little scrupled on the 
 death of this friend to marry the same wife over again. Celibacy and 
 childlessness became more and more common, especially among the upper 
 classes. While among those marriage had long been regarded as a burden 
 which people took upon them as the best in the public interest, we now 
 encounter even in Cato and those who shared Cato's sentiments, the maxim 
 to which Polybius a century before traced the decay of Hellas, that it is 
 the duty of a citizen to keep great wealth together, and therefore not to 
 beget too many children. 
 
 "Inconsequence of such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy * 
 underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread 
 partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation. Large numbers 
 of Roman natives immigrated, and, as a compensation for these, Italy 
 obtained on the one hand the protectorate of slaves and freedmen, on the 
 other hand the craftsmen and traders nocked there from Asia Minor, 
 Syria, and Egypt. 
 
 "There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between 
 the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and 
 painfully this contrast was felt on both sides, the giddier the height to 
 which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned; the more fre- 
 quently amidst that changeful world of speculations and playing at hazard, 
 were individuals tossed from the top to the bottom and again from the bot- 
 tom to the top. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds are exter- 
 nally divided, the more completely they coincide in the like annihilation 
 of family life, which is yet the germ and core of all nationality, in the like 
 
 * Vide the same stock in modern France. 
 
160 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, and the like unmanly 
 dependence, the like corruption differing only in its scales, the like demor- 
 alization of criminals, the like longing to begin the war with property. 
 Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and 
 filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The world of Intellect is in labor to-day, and the sweet child 
 now being born is to be a new power in the lands. Its father is 
 Science, its mother is true Philosophy, its mission is Real 
 Reform. Both parents have erewhile made a great bluster and 
 pretension. Each has in turn asserted a great deal, promised 
 more, and achieved less, until at last, like a very wise couple, 
 they have abandoned talk in a great measure, and gone to work 
 in real earnest. Common Sense is its name, and is the grand 
 result to be. People are getting weary of platitudes, and are 
 hungry for real food. 
 
 This has been called the age of Gold, Silver, and Iron, by turns. 
 We choose to call it the age of Brass, — for certainly the " Phi- 
 losophers " have proved it so, — and that not a few of them have 
 striven to prove it the age of "Tin" is demonstrated b} r the 
 fact that just as soon as their exchequers have been well stocked, 
 their " philosophy " suddenly collapsed and demised. Loudly 
 have scores of " Reformers " talked about bettering the condi- 
 tion of the people, yet how much better off are these self-same 
 people to-day? A few 3>-ears ago we were told that "Free 
 Love" was the thing to make people happy. But are these 
 people half as happy now as they were before they accepted 
 that doctrine, and run the chances of a tremendous experiment? 
 We fear not, and have said so ; but the ever-ready answer is : 
 " The experiment has not yet been fairly tried. Wait till it is, 
 and then decide. Yourself may have suffered from this thing — 
 yea, have seen men and women apparently ruined by it ; but 
 these are exceptional cases. Wait a while and we will show 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 161 
 
 you magnificent results." "Well, perhaps it is so ; but this 
 writer does not believe a word of it. Let us patiently await the 
 " results," we shall see what we shall see ! ... At present 
 we have strong, rather strong objections to seeing our daugh- 
 ters, or wives, or our friend's wife and daughter, members of, 
 — well, never mind, — we'll skip the hard words just dropping 
 from the pen. 
 
 Unquestionably, all things considered, we are now living in 
 the very midst of the greatest social, moral, and political revo- 
 lution the world has ever seen. Around us, on all sides, the 
 signs of the times proclaim this fact, and the crumbling ruins 
 of human folly are rapidly disappearing, one by one, but 
 surely. The dust of the debris partially blinds many of us ; 
 but presently the clear breezes of rationality will spring up : we 
 will then see clearer than we now do, and among other things 
 that we shall behold in the new and cryptic light, with clarified 
 vision, will be the general subject we are now discussing, 
 namely, the love and marriage questions in all their bearings, 
 both " legal" and " illicit," or in wedlock and out of wedlock. 
 We shall then discuss the themes, void of prejudice, and solely 
 on their own integral merits. 
 
 Old-fogy notions of all sorts, sizes, shapes, and kinds, that 
 have long usurped the popular throne, are, somehow or other, 
 growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less. Presently, 
 they will all quietly fall to pieces and to earth, and on their 
 former sites, in men's minds, shall be upbuilded true ideas of 
 human life and human justice. The Temple of the true God 
 shall yet be builded of human hearts, and therein shall the 
 Supreme be daily worshipped, — the Temple of moral, mental, 
 affectional, and physical health. Till this comes to pass, and 
 at best it is slow work, we must wait, and in good deeds, and 
 rightful thinking, ever pray. 
 
 The jewel of life is health, and there can be no health, either 
 of body, mind, morals, or affection, if the digestive and other 
 organs of either sex be so deranged as to vitiate their secre- 
 tions. 
 
 We have been told by certain teachers, that love is in no wiso 
 
162 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 connected to, associated with, or influenced by, passional desire. 
 These teachers are both right and wrong, — right, when they 
 elevate the sentiment of friendship, and call it love ; wrong, 
 when they confound the amicive, or friendly, feeling with the 
 amative passion. Affection is an attribute of the soul per se, 
 and is altogether independent of magnetic attraction, personal 
 appearance, sex, or condition. Intensifications of friendship 
 probably constitute the rapturous bliss of the souls in heaven. 
 Love is the attractive chord, chain, substance, which connects 
 the two universal sexes together, and of them constitutes one 
 grand unity, Man. It is entirely different from that other 
 thing, which binds together persons of the same gender. Illus- 
 tration : A eunuch is notoriously capable of the grandest, 
 deepest, most intense, and self-abnegating friendship, but is 
 totally incapable of feeling love, for the reason that the surgical 
 process of neutralization has also cut away his manhood in 
 nearly every conceivable sense, and thereby laid an eternal 
 interdict on all loving, so far as woman is concerned. The 
 entire normal action of his soul and body is utterly lost, and in 
 no conceivable sense can he change the food and drink he takes 
 into these forceful and vivific elements and auras, whose pres- 
 ence in a real man is the sign of power. The mighty element, 
 on whose presence in man depends much of the soul love- 
 power of human kind, cannot be elaborated from his provender 
 by him in any degree whatever ; nor can his organic structure 
 change the material already in it, to its higher, aeriform, and 
 ethereal state, in which form, in whole men, it pervades the 
 body, and gives the energy, manliness, grace, fortitude, beauty, 
 pathos, and nobility, which characterize the full, true, healthy 
 man, or gallant youth. In consequence of his irremediable 
 injury, the unfortunate being, thus murdered, becomes com- 
 pletely emasculated in spirit as well as body ; his voice 
 changes from a manly bass or baritone to a high and sharp fal- 
 setto-squeak, or to a rough and harsh, grating sound, resembling 
 nothing on earth, in the air or sea, but itself. His manliness, 
 and manfulness as well, take flight never more to return ; his 
 animal or brutal nature increases ; misanthropy grows apace ; 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 163 
 
 generosity takes wing, except when he conceives that wonderful 
 liking for a single person, which in a measure redeems, and 
 keeps him within the human pale. The eunuch's bones become 
 knobby, his flesh flabby, skin loose, puttyish, and his person 
 exhales an almost iusufferable odor, requiring daily ablutions 
 to keep him bearable at all. The most unconscionable scoun- 
 drels in the streets of Cairo and Stamboul are the eunuchs, 
 made so on purpose to keep them honest, in one direction at 
 least. 
 
 Now, be it known, that your regular rake, and out-and-out 
 libertine, — philosophic, scientific, or religious, — (a la Perfec- 
 tionists of the John H. Noyes school in America, and the 
 Agapemonites of Britain), — all those who fancy that the grati- 
 fication of unbridled lust constitutes the summum bonum of 
 human bliss, after a short career become first, moral, then in- 
 tellectual, and, finally, by early excess, a sort of physical 
 eunuchs as well ; and all such manage, after a few years, to 
 make themselves a hell-bed, whereon they must inevitably writhe 
 in this life, and that which many of us feel is yet to come. 
 Look at your fast man after ten years of "fancy life" and if a 
 more loathly and forbidding human wreck can be found, where 
 shall we look for it ? 
 
 No matter what speculators may assert to the contrary, 
 physical desire is an ingredient in the love which every man 
 bears toward woman ; nor is that love worth much that is di- 
 vested thereof. Who would believe the man who should say he 
 loved a female, not his own blood relative, in whom the amative 
 element was not active ? No one. 
 
 A woman instinctively knows a man, even in a crowd, 
 whose love and loving nature is round and full. A man recog- 
 nizes a woman, meet her where he may, who is healthy, sound, 
 complete, and full in the love-element of human nature, and each 
 does respectful homage to the other. Now all this is plain and 
 simple, and results from the mutual recognition of the other's 
 ability to impart and receive a purely human bliss (and by no 
 means a merely animal gratification), in their social relations, 
 and in the ways and walks of virtuous life, such as is con- 
 
164 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 sequent upon the pure, spontaneous, harmonious, and magnetic 
 blending of healthful souls, through the effluence of pure and 
 healthful bodies. 
 
 The man, who can, but will not, render due respect, affection, 
 and homage to the woman deliberately chosen as bis wife, a man 
 whose nature is so perverted that he cannot mingle with other 
 women without losing his self-respect and desiring to debase 
 them, and who neglects his wife for others, has discovered 
 the express route to damnation and utter ruin ! — has found out 
 the speediest method to bury all of heaven and raise a dreadful 
 hell beneath his roof-tree ; and the wife who can, yet fails to 
 give of will as well as word, to the lord of her choice, will not 
 tarry long for the pleasure of knowing that she has half driven 
 her husband from her fireside, to seek for solace — where the 
 poor fool can never find it if be looks a hundred centuries — in 
 a wanton's ready arms ! 
 
 Diseased morals, brains, heads, hearts, intellects, and passions 
 abound wherever civilization has opened its marts or erected its 
 standards, and nowhere else. If human progress means the 
 advancement of science, art, literature, and international traffic, 
 then we of Christendom have progressed immensely ; but if it 
 means the advancement of human happiness, why, then — so 
 far — the writer is unable to " see it." We have lots of meta- 
 physics, — which means physics in a mist, — and lots of other 
 sorts of physic, but still suffering abounds ; nor will transcen- 
 dentalism — vague and flickering taper at best — at all illumine 
 us as to the reason why happiness has not kept pace with 
 material advancement. We are bored to death with long rig- 
 marole platitudes about the " conflict of the ages," in the vain 
 endeavor to account for the wide-spread devilment of all sorts 
 now rampant through the world ; just as if Tom and Betsey 
 cared a fig about, or were at all affected in their personal in- 
 terests by all the conflicts of all the ages ! Their own squabbles 
 and conflicts are what interest and disturb them; and how 
 to end them finally is the thing the aforesaid Tom and Betsey 
 •want most to find out. There are a good many Toms and 
 Betseys in the world ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 165 
 
 The philosophers have written, and quarrelled, and squab- 
 bled, and talked, until we are sick, about the " Origin of Evil," 
 and the cure of it. They have explained it so very clearly 
 that we are just in the precise spot, and degree of knowledge 
 on the subject, that the world was forty centuries ago ! The 
 fact is, that the explanation of this " evil " mystery, as usual, 
 was, and is, to be found right under the noses of those far-see- 
 ing and very sage people, who, in strict accordance with their 
 old bent, are forever taking the longest way about for the 
 shortest way home ! 
 
 The moral, or immoral tone, or habits of a man, woman, 
 community, or nation, depend upon physical causes almost 
 entirely, such as climate, locality, geographical position, the 
 form of food, houses, nature of the clothing worn, the degree of 
 recreation, amusements, the water drank, the quantity of stim- 
 ulants, tea, coffee, wine, beer, and a thousand other physical 
 things, all of which act or react normally, or otherwise, upon 
 the bodily organs, especially the amative ; and the conditions, 
 healthful or otherwise, of these organs must react upon the 
 mental, moral, and social man. Facts are stated, facts that any 
 one can see ; and these go further towards settling the ques- 
 tions of free will, chance, destin} r , morals, and religion, than 
 all the hyper-physical or metaphysical stuff ever printed or 
 hatched in the brains of lonely students in pent-up chambers, 
 redolent with burning lamp oil — excuse us ! kerosene ! — just 
 such chambers as that^ wherein the untravelled philosopher 
 evolved a camel from the depths of his own consciousness, he 
 never having seen the animal ; precisely as other philosophers 
 evolve a system of love and other social ethics, without ever 
 having experienced anything of the sort, or having been there, 
 or knowing how it is themselves. 
 
 In a previous work the present author asserted, and now re- 
 affirms, that no man can be perfectly virtuous in an unclean 
 under-garment, for even the lowest man walking, or the most 
 wretched troll wandering the streets in search of human flies, 
 entertains a higher opinion of themselves when dressed up ; 
 while the biggest blackguard in the shire feels elevated to the 
 
166 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 pitch and possibility of good and virtuous deeds, and high and 
 noble thoughts, under the inspiration resulting from a cold bath 
 and fresh linen. Deduction : the moral tone of a community, 
 depends upon the health or unhealth of the digestive and other 
 organs, the sanitary condition of the vital apparatus of the indi- 
 viduals comprising the community. Why ? Because individuals 
 make up society, societies make up the nation, and the nations 
 give form and tone to the ages. Rome fell because her people 
 became licentious, sensually corrupt. Modern Roines are fol- 
 lowing in the same old wake. So be cautious, noble Romans ! 
 
 Once let the vital apparatus mainly concerned in love and its 
 offices and missions be disordered, even slightly, and the whole 
 system, mental, moral and physical, will quail and tremble 
 beneath the spell, just as surely as that one and one do not 
 make twelve. When they are badly deranged, torpid, or un- 
 duly active, the tower of human nobility and strength — social, 
 domestic, moral and physical — inevitably begins to crumble 
 and topple over towards the fast accelerating fall. We suffer 
 often when we ought to enjoy ; we languish, when we ought to 
 thrive and be happy ; we are — Americans especially — too ex- 
 citable, nervous, anxious ; and have as a general thing seen 
 more of life, lived longer, in fact, at forty years, than Methu- 
 saleh did when his last year was ended. Very few people in 
 civildom, old or young, male or female, are healthy. Most of 
 us have a failing, a weak spot, — morally, pl^sically, intel- 
 lectually or affectionally ; nor can we . enjoy life unless these 
 failings are overcome, which cannot be unless by the grace of 
 God and practical common sense, — aided, abetted and assisted 
 by — soap, — not the soft sort ! but good, hard old Windsor, or 
 Castile — applied with a crash towel and flesh-brush — at least 
 three times a week. There's nothing like soap — to clean a 
 a man's body — and his morals! his epidermis — and his con- 
 science ! 
 
 The physical and moral continents of the wonderful world 
 called Man are closely connected. A sound mind can dwell in 
 an unsound body, but only for a season. Insanity and the 
 erratic mental flights and explorations of very much of the 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 167 
 
 modern, so-called genius, is, in the majority of cases, the result 
 of, or is associated in both sexes with, derangement of the extra- 
 vital organism, and health can only be restored by bringing 
 that back to a moral condition. Food swallowed is rapidly con- 
 verted into chyme, chyle, blood, nervous fluid and various other 
 lymphs, and then, by action mysterious and wonderful, into 
 nerve-aura. 
 
 In society, not over one in seventy of either sex but in whom 
 the s} T stem last named is, to a greater or less extent, diseased. 
 Those persons are the most joyous, healthful, kind, Christian, 
 affectionate and obliging, in whom nerve-aura is the most pure 
 and abundant ; while those who are diseased in those respects 
 are never healthy in any other way, for this disordered state 
 eventually effeminates the mind, and is productive of vagaries 
 and positive insanity. The loss or waste of nerve-aura, beyond 
 a certain amount, unmistakably impoverishes the blood and 
 body ; while the unwise expenditure of it directly affects un- 
 favorably, not only the active intellect, but the deathless soul 
 itself. When the system is healthy the soul corresponds ; if it 
 is chilled, fevered, or in any way diseased, they inevitably cany 
 the disease along with them. 
 
 It may be — but ought not — necessary to here state that 
 those who imagine there is but one mode, and that the passional 
 one, of wasting life and its essences, are wofully mistaken ; 
 perpetual wakefulness, too little sleep, wastes it. Rum and 
 wine, beer and ale drinking to an undue extent, wastes it. Too 
 much mental labor, or physical either, wastes it. Fretfulness, 
 inordinate and long-continued thought, grief, sorrow, — in short, 
 any and all excess, of whatever possible variety or kind, are so 
 many drafts on the bank of life ; wherefore it is well to keep a 
 good running account therein, for if you don't your notes will 
 be returned dishonored, protested and endorsed, No funds. 
 
 These secretions in the body of the female become pai't of 
 the body of her future child, if she conceives, and it is thus that- 
 transmissions of disease and other qualities are accomplished. 
 Illustration : A drunken man fathers a child, and just as sure 
 as he does so, the chances are that the alcohol will in some way 
 
168 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 so impregnate his being and his child, that it will either be 
 idiotic or imperfect, else will come forth to the world with a 
 penchant for stimulants, almost irresistible ! 
 
 In normal life and loving, the superabundance of nerve aura, 
 — this most precious element, — after undergoing a change from 
 the lymphy to an aeriform state, is sent along the telegraphic 
 nerve-system to all parts of the body ; but in greater volume to 
 the brain by day, and to the solar plexus when we sleep, whence 
 it is distributed all over the body, vivifying it and increasing 
 vigor. Thus is verified the saying, that love constitutes the life 
 of man. 
 
 When the health is deranged, this balm of existence, this 
 divine, human nerve-life, is frequently wasted, becomes acrid, 
 sour, and poisonous, not only to the man himself, but to the 
 unfortunate woman who may sustain what were otherwise the 
 most sacred intimacy in wedlock. A man thus conditioned is 
 no more fit for the conjugal relation than an atheist is to preach 
 Christ's gospel to a sinful world ! His embrace is the embrace 
 of poison and of death, and his very presence is as potent for 
 disease and evil as is the drop from a cobra's fang. Contra- 
 wise ; suppose the wife to be afflicted in a similar manner, she 
 must inevitably, slowly, it may be, but surely, poison her hus- 
 band, who contracts it by absorption ; and if she be charged 
 with virus, either fluid or ethereal, so much the worse for him. 
 Indeed, this sort of poisoning is a common affair nowada3 r s in 
 these progressive times ; and is the prolific cause of four-fifths 
 of the human ailments of the civilized globe ; people don't sus- 
 pect it, but it's true, nevertheless. 
 
 Free Love ! No man is free who has not command over him- 
 self, but suffers his passions to control him. The principal ex- 
 cuse of the class of persons who advocate promiscuity is, that 
 not being well mated, they are obliged to go from home to seek 
 the supply for which there is a demand in their souls (bodies 
 rather). This is all sheer twaddle ! Such folks, very imperfect 
 themselves, demand perfection in their mates. They " don't 
 see it ; " hence logic and everything else is twisted to suit their 
 turn, in the vain hope of making themselves believe that their 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 169 
 
 erotic course is the right one. Their morbid desires and spe- 
 cial pleadings are accepted as God's warrant, authorizing a 
 woman to destroy any other woman's peace and break up her 
 family, by robbing her of her husband ; and for any lecherous 
 man to do as his debased nature may suggest. 
 
 Not a few people imagine their domestic difficulties spring 
 from natural incompatibility of soul ; a mal-adaptation between 
 them whose only relief is death or divorce. Now, in seventy- 
 five cases of discord out of every one hundred, such a conclu- 
 sion would be erroneous ; for probably not one-fortieth part of 
 all the matrimonial infelicity extant has a deeper seat than mere 
 physical ill-health, which a very little dose of Reasonable Try 
 speedily cures ; for disease of the love-nature is sure to affect 
 the mind, religion, morals, and philosophy of the patient, 
 quicker, deeper, and more formidably, than ailments of any 
 other sort under heaven. 
 
 To the jaundiced all things wear a sickty 3'ellow hue. When 
 the heart is full of love and affection, and the body full of 
 vigor, all things look serene and beautiful. To the victims of 
 false love and falser marriage-troubles the world seems clad in 
 indigo raiment ; the male victim contemplates, with a sort of 
 wild satisfaction, the various methods of reaching the other 
 world by express ; while to the female sufferer all nature seems 
 to be one vast graveyard, and her life-paths to be strewn with 
 dead men's mouldering bones. 
 
 People with livers chronically torpid go in for hell-fire of the 
 most approved grilling incandescence ; not for themselves, but 
 for all who have active livers, and a good digestion, — who for 
 that reason devoutly believe in universal salvation ! Certain 
 sorts of revivals happen most frequently in regions where pork 
 is most abundant, and the water comes from limestone deposits. 
 
 Bad health is unfavorable to healthy love ; but then a lean 
 love is better than none, provided it be genuine. " Why, 
 Sarah ! 3 r ou've gone and married since last I saw you ! But, 
 la, what a little man you have got!" — "Yes; but then, you 
 see, a little husband is a great deal better than no husband at 
 
170 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 all ! " Sensible Sarah ! That's a poor specimen of humanity 
 who don't love somebody. 
 
 The life may be injured or destroyed in various ways ; it may 
 be injured by passion, alcohol, tobacco, habitual acid or alka- 
 line drinks ; strong tea, coffee, diseased bladder, womb, kidneys, 
 rectum, fistula, and absolute continence and idleness, or excess 
 of any sort. Of course such a tree must be barren of the best 
 fruit, of whatever sort it maj^ be. When a female is thus abnor- 
 mal, the realization of her dream of marriage must remain a 
 dream only ; for although she reaches maternity she really can- 
 not tell how it happened ; for to her the fact was quite inciden- 
 tal — as well as accidental — poor thing ! reaping the penalties 
 minus all the promised and hoped-for joys. Let's count hands ! 
 "Women, attention ! All you who know how this is yourselves 
 hold up 3 r our right hands! One, two, five, — a thousand, — 
 millions ! Good God ! what a forest of hands ! 
 
 As with woman so also with man. He can never be truly 
 great, so long as in all respects he is not wholly, truly, fairly, 
 a genuine man ! 
 
 Women are often averse to yield, what only brutes claim as a 
 right. They are not to blame. It is the voice of nature her- 
 self protesting against murder. Tenderness and attention, 
 long-continued tenderness, only can overcome this aversion, 
 and whosoever resorts to harsher methods to gain an unwelcome 
 sacrifice is a wretch too mean to exist among civilized com- 
 munities. Women are often wretched in spirit, and sick in 
 body, worn clown, hopeless and desponding, from the fact that 
 one or both the belts which sustain the principal organs of their 
 sex are loose and relaxed. This often comes of unwelcome in- 
 terference at unwelcome seasons, and he who does it is not a 
 husband, but a brute ! 
 
WOMAN. LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 171 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A " kept " woman never yet made a home for a man, for 
 home, in the true and better sense, means happiness, and there 
 can be none of that in a dwelling where everything is present 
 save the sacred and sanctified tie, which alone redeems the 
 Union in the eyes of true men and women, because the very 
 foundation-elements of human justice, fair play for the woman 
 as the man ; honor, truth, respect, — all are wanting, are 
 wholly absent from any such arrangement, — in this country at 
 least, whatever may be the case in other lands, and other places 
 of Christian civilization. Even if the place woman rolls in 
 unbounded wealth, and has every luxury at command which 
 heart could wish, still there is bitter in her tea, and gall in every 
 mouthful she eats ! She is the open scorn and butt of contempt 
 of her own servants, even down to scullery maid and wash- 
 woman, — and a scorn, too, so deep that cologne will not wash it 
 out, for the beggar's wife thinks herself degraded by contact 
 with her, and the wife of the lowest thief in Christendom lolls 
 out her tongue as the glittering harlot passes by ! and, what is 
 worse still, she despises herself quite as much as they do ; and 
 at heart she feels a withering contempt for the " man " she pre- 
 tends to., and may really think she loves. How can it be other- 
 wise, if she is an intelligent woman? How can she do else, — 
 he who disdains and refuses to make her what every woman has 
 a heaven-born right to be — an honest and respected wife ! 
 
 As for the piece of a man who thus does violence to himself, 
 his leman and society, if he thinks at all, he knows, as he stands 
 before his mirror, that he beholds the image of a contemptible 
 scoundrel, unworthy of association with decent people, because 
 self-conscious of his bad example ; his violation of the first prin- 
 ciples of manhood ; his injustice to the woman he debases ; the 
 same with regard to himself, — whom he knows to be a bad 
 man, if not a villain, desperately engaged in undermining, what 
 it took all mankind to erect — the edifice of social order. He 
 knows he is the promoter and encourager of prostitution and 
 
172 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 libertinage, and a direct enemy of God, nature and Human- 
 ity. 
 
 As slie, in the first intoxication of success, struts the streets in 
 glaring gaud, and flaunts her fine feathers in the faces of honest 
 women, there is often a coal of fire in her heart raging fiercely, 
 and she would give all her feathers and flummery, and be con- 
 tent with work-woman's fare, could she but feel she had the 
 innate respect that laboress commands ; for all people rush to 
 the relief, comfort and sympathy of a wife; but all, save her 
 kind, and only a few of them, stand aloof from the courtesan, 
 whom they may flatter, but whom they nevertheless heartily 
 despise. 
 
 As he drives her about town behind a fine span, he involun- 
 tarily classes her in the same list with his horses ; both to be 
 used for the present joy they bring ; for the tie between them 
 being one wholly of nerves, pocket-books and sense, it is im- 
 possible for him to think otherwise ; for notwithstanding the 
 twain may be wildly, madly infatuated with each other, }^et 
 there's not one single spark of divine, or strictly human love 
 about it. Let Poverty seize him, and her beauty fade away, 
 and the difference between "This" and "That" will very 
 quickly show itself ; for neither man. nor woman can be really 
 happy when flying squarely in the face of public opinion, morals 
 and custom ; or in a union which either secretly or openly vio- 
 lates the supreme law of God, or those of human morals, both 
 of which proclaim in thunder tones, that one man and one 
 woman, in open, honorable marriage, is the sole condition of 
 happiness, the true and substantial nucleus of the family, tribe, 
 race, nation, and civilization. From the observance of these 
 laws, inherent in humanity, alone comes wealth of soul and 
 goodness. Around such unions the virtues gather, and religion 
 grows apace ; while from their neglect, violation, and non- 
 observance springs every vice and crime which mars the uni- 
 versal weal, fills all the prisons, and engenders all the wretched- 
 ness on earth. Oh, that people would but think of these things ! 
 They will sooner or later. 
 
 In these days when society is full of fevers and chills, people 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 173 
 
 are too careless in selecting their mates, for with both sexes 
 alike, person, good looks, and dress carry the day ; while real 
 merit seldom determines the choice of either. Too much atten- 
 tion is paid to mere appearance, too little to the substantialities 
 of character and moral worth. They mistake a fever for love, 
 and in the whirl of their delirium settle matters with or without 
 a ring, onby to be awakened presently to the awkward fact that 
 they easily got into a difficulty very hard to get out of again. 
 Then comes drinking, flirtation, adultery ! Let the curtain fall ; 
 for the results of this universal distemper of mistakes, this 
 madness of the mind, are too dreadful to contemplate. 
 
 A word just here on ante-nuptial familiarities : First, the 
 man who insists on, and gains his point is — aside from his 
 diabolic knavery — a fool, for if he marries her afterward ten 
 chances to one but that special memory will be a bitter one to 
 both. If he don't marry her, he is both a double thief, and the 
 spoliator of some other man's happiness ; beside obliging her, in 
 that case, to tell one vast lie, and live it ever after ; or tell the 
 truth, and have it thrown up in her face a hundred times a year. 
 In either case, and to both parties, such a false step leads to 
 wretchedness ; whereas if God and human law first sanction 
 that familiarity, the chances of continued happiness are ten to 
 one in their joint favor for the balance of life. 
 
 Ring in the orchestra, turn on the lights, shift the scenes, 
 raise the curtain, and let the audience witness another portion 
 of the grand drama — Love, in all its Phases ! 
 
 People will, in these days, as a general thing, let us say, 
 peruse a book on the ''Perils of Incontinence;" go to a 
 lecture against "Licentiousness" in the evening ; will applaud 
 the speaker whenever a rap is delivered on the devoted head 
 of Amativeness ; they will leave the hall brimful of the " dead- 
 liest " virtue, and in less than two hours thereafter will fall 
 victims to the first temptation — just as easy ! — merely by way 
 of proving that human nature is a queer sort of thing, and that 
 the whole matter is governed by a law outside of, and above, 
 ndividual likings, longings, tastes, volitions or resolves ; unless 
 
174 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 and until the man within obtains full control of the man without, 
 and by rigid self-discipline has learned to restrain and direct 
 the passion-tide, and properly keep it within limits. But the 
 curtain is up, look ! See ! A husband has just brought his 
 tender and virgin bride from the altar to their home. The}' are 
 very joyous, and think themselves happy, but as yet have no 
 proper notion of what happiness is. True, a heavenly smile 
 plays in mischief among the roses of Marie's cheeks, and the 
 coral of her lips ; and yet, somehow or other, there comes ever 
 and anon a furtive look, betraying half doubt, half fear, and a 
 deeper crimson than a maiden's modest blush rather pales this 
 coral and these roses occasionally, and momentarily overcasts 
 the sunshine. Why is this? Some will sny, "It is the natural 
 result of her new position ; resulting from the modest maiden's 
 entree on the fuller and higher life of womanhood ! " But the 
 writer dares to say it is, in nine cases in every twelve, no such 
 thing. It is the deep intuition of her woman's soul pre-war n- 
 ing her of nameless horrors yet to be ! Look at the groom. A 
 fine specimen of a physical man ; full of vigor, blood and youth. 
 What fervor and what animation ! How earnestly he gazes on 
 the treasure he has brought ! how very ardently he looks clown 
 into the depths of her eyes ! yet we don't like the sort of look ; 
 there's a something we cannot like about it. He is all aglow, — 
 his breath is rather thick and husky — has suddenly become so, 
 as he finds, or thinks he has, that for the first time since the 
 ceremony they are alone ! Not quite ! for God is there, though 
 the bridegroom knows it not. The solicitude he manifests 
 smacks of something less noble than true affection, and the 
 peculiar tone of his voice savors far more of physical passion, 
 than of noble and manly love. Good-night ! . . Good-morn- 
 ing, sweet bride ! We will call in a month to see you as we 
 pass along this way. . . . Next month has come, but all 
 her roses have strangely fled, alas ! and fled forever ! Poor 
 girl ! She fondly imagined she was about to find a man and a 
 husband. She has found onhy a — brute ! . . . How pale 
 she is ; her lithesome, tripping gait has given place to a nervous 
 Btep. Evidently something is wrong. ..... Months 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 175 
 
 have fled. She is enciente — but not of the child of her own 
 and her husband's vigor. Oh, no ! but the immortal house 
 within her bosom is being builded of the last dregs of two ex- 
 hausted human bodies. . . . Ten years have fled, and this 
 couple keep all the time wondering why their eldest born is 
 such a little, measly, nerveless, scranny, morbid child. They 
 are paying for their folly in long doctor's bills ; and the heart- 
 wrung tears they both will shed next month, as little Harry's 
 form is forever hidden by earth heaped on his coffin by the 
 sexton's friendly spade, are a portion of the penalty ! . . . 
 Come, let us go up the road — into the village tavern ; the 
 father of the little boy that died is there, listening to the trial 
 before Justice Goodman, of a wretched scamp who went and 
 bought a splendid three-year old colt, and then actually so ill- 
 used it, by over-driving, that the poor thing died on the road, — : 
 right under the lash, — for which deed the culprit has been ar- 
 raigned. He defends himself and says : — 
 
 "Let me alone, let me alone! 
 
 Can't a man do what he likes with his own? " 
 
 " Not always," says Justice Goodman. " The horse had 
 rights ; all horses have rights to food, shelter, and fair treat- 
 ment. The practical denial of those rights, or their purposed 
 invasion, is a positive crime, and as such is punishable. Be- 
 sides this, society has rights, nor are they to be wantonly out- 
 raged, as they are whenever a brute beast is victimized, when it 
 ought to be protected. Society has a humanitary interest, — an 
 interest which altogether takes precedence of yours, which is 
 merely pecuniary. It was your duty to deal justly by the 
 horse ; mine to see that you neglected it not. You had no 
 right — no one has a right — to ride a free horse to death. I 
 therefore fine j r ou for your cruelty." — " Serves him right ! " 
 cries Harry's father — dead Harry! "Serves him right!" 
 echoes everybody else. "Wonder if he or they can discover any 
 parallel between that dead horse and a certain dying wife — or 
 wives ? The writer can. Reader, can you ? Try ! 
 
176 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 Shift the scene again : How often, could we listen to connu- 
 bial talk, would we hear things like the following : — 
 Tender Husband. " Hang it ! you're alwa} r s and forever 
 grunting, — always sick, sick, sick, — and have been ever since I 
 married you ! " There ! that's just it to a fraction, — " ever 
 since he married her ! ! " No, not that, either ; for, after all, 
 marriage is something more than a priestly ceremony. He did 
 not marry her ; no man can talk in that style to the woman he 
 has married — in the full, deep sense of that prostituted word; 
 no, not that ; but she has been sick ever since he cheated her 
 into a contract, just as London Jews cheat young spendthrifts 
 out of reversions and post-obit bonds. A Man cannot treat a 
 wife ill in any respect, albeit husbands may, and do thus and 
 otherwise ill-treat the women law-entrusted to their charge. 
 When a couple are married, — as God intended all should be, 
 — the woman grows spiritually younger as years roll on, and 
 time ploughs his furrows very slowly in her cheek, and on his 
 brow. 
 
 How often it happens that couples come together when life is 
 all a calm, and the first j^ear or so is sweet and balmy to their 
 souls ; yet, alas ! how soon comes, first, the low and distant 
 social growl, speedily deepening into hoarse mutterings, soon to 
 break out into fierce tempests, and domestic storms and strifes ! 
 This is common ; this is an every-day story ; this is true of ten 
 times ten thousand families. But why is this so? we ask ; and 
 common sense responds : Because every one of these numerous 
 thousands of couples started wrong at the outset. Because 
 during the first six months of wedlock the wrong kind of love 
 held the reins, instead of pure and calm affection. These 
 words are as true as God is true. The mistake, the folly, the 
 pernicious oversight, lies right there I Instead of planting a bed 
 of roses, whirlwinds are sown — ruthlessly, foolishly sown ; and 
 what marvel, in truth's name ! that hurricanes, the fruitful crop 
 of such peculiar seed, should be the harvest naturally reaped? 
 What a pity that these ten, ay, these hundred thousand, couples, 
 had not previously studied the deep significance of the words : 
 " Keep cool " ! What a pity the grooms of all these half-mur- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 1TJ 
 
 dered brides had not learned that mighty yet very simple les- 
 son ! What is the result of this marital discord ? Why, sim- 
 ply, ay, notoriously, this : The husband soon grows ex- 
 tremely sensitive and susceptible to the peculiar charms and 
 attractions of crinoline when worn by almost any other woman 
 than his own wife. What's the upshot of it all? Why, out of 
 this common, very common state of things, come bickerings, 
 hatreds, jealousies, elopements, adulteries, and the whole fright- 
 ful catalogue of social and domestic miseries, which so ineffably 
 disgrace the age in which we — stay, — for live, we certainly do 
 not. Why? Again: Because the love-fountains between 
 couples are too often dried up during the first year of max*ried 
 life. In many cases, by far too many, the domestic hearth 
 grows altogether too freezingly cold, or too infernally hot for 
 the comfort of the twain. Consequence : They separate : 
 She takes her half-gestated, and less than half-finished, little, 
 scx*anny children, and ekes out a livelihood as best she can ; 
 while the husband embarks on a voyage in search of common 
 sense, which, if he find, ere it be too late to amend his folly, 
 will prove more valuable than forty thousand golden fleeces, 
 such as lt Mister" Jason went sailing after, just subsequent to 
 running off from his wife and two children — the scamp ! 
 
 The junior members of a man's family should be the perfec- 
 tion of the quintuple powers of God, Love, Nature, health, and 
 parental care. These, not the cattle-raiser's " Art," are what 
 thoroughly does the great, good business ; for Art, especially 
 the sort alluded to, is out of its legitimate element and sphere 
 when it interferes in this affair, except in so-far-forth as that 
 some of her external and sanitary rules are applied to perfect- 
 ing the personal or bodily health of those who would, or may 
 become parents ; for instance, a cold bath in the house ; a 
 not too hard or too soft bed, — which bed stands head to the 
 north in the centre of the best room in the house, and the best- 
 furnished one besides ; with a beautiful picture or statue so 
 placed over its foot, that it shall ever be the first object beheld 
 on opening the eyes after God's sweet agent, balmy sleep, has 
 fulfilled her recreative office. 
 
178 WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 
 
 There was once a married woman who had a picture of Christ 
 in her chamber. By and by she gave a child to the world, 
 which was the living embodiment of the artist's canvas-mas- 
 terpiece. 
 
 Children are sent hither, by the Lord of infinite glory, through 
 processes altogether too deep for our present consideration. 
 All these mysteries must, in their essence, remain mysteries 
 forever. We know that this and that take place, but the how 
 is what none will ever fully know. Suffice it that the means 
 are arranged, carried out, and certain ends attained by the in- 
 scrutable power and providence of ever-present and all-wise 
 God. All human aids are therefore secondary, and none but 
 idiots or fools will either claim all knowledge concerning the 
 processes, or usurp the prerogatives of God and nature, by 
 attempting to achieve impossibilities. If we people act well 
 our parts, mentally, socially, morally, affectionally and conju- 
 gally, our Infinite Father will take good care of His, and so 
 will the good old mamma, Nature. 
 
 Now, the greatest obstacle to the ushering in upon the world's 
 stage of the right sort of children, such as never make us 
 mourn their birth, and who never bring gray hairs in sorrow to 
 the grave, is nothing more nor less than the absurd follies, 
 quick tempers, and uneven lives, capped with excesses of all 
 sorts, which b}' far too many of us at present lead. 
 
 Amativeness is — especially under our life-condensing 
 modern regime — run wild, — is almost untamable; brings 
 more people to grief, causes more heart-aches, body-aches, sighs, 
 groans, tears ; builds more poor-houses, jails, mad-houses, and 
 condemns more people to them ; erects more gibbets, and twists 
 more human necks upon them ; encourages more vice of all 
 sorts, and populates more grave}-ards, than any other one thing 
 beneath heaven's expanded dome. 
 
 Licentious freedom — mere amative liberty — inevitably 
 breeds three very bad things, — bad health, base morals, and 
 worse business habits ! Wiry? Because that which in itself is 
 a good thing is suffered to take a leading position in the human 
 economy, instead of being restricted to its legitimate and sub- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MAURI AGE. 179 
 
 ordinate place. Let love be brought into a healthful normal 
 case, and the obverse of the above sad catalogue will obtain. 
 
 The governing principles of the civilized world are rapidly- 
 changing for the better. "We are now emerging from the old- 
 established order, at least so far as the subjects of the present 
 treatise are concerned ; and we are slowly but surely moving 
 toward an improved condition of things. At present, civilized 
 Christendom frowns upon the open practice of marital promis- 
 cuity. Doubtless this is " all right ; " but what, strikes us as 
 rather curious, is this : The frown isn't honest ; it is Policy, 
 rather than Principle. We love the latter ; we try to respect 
 the former, but it is hard work. "What troubles us most is this : 
 Why don't civilized Christendom stick to its true text, and quit 
 breaking all the rules of the decalogue, — the seventh espe- 
 cially ? "What a holy horror " society " has of the female who 
 gives a loose rein to her love and loving instincts ! And yet 
 how luxuriously that self-same "society" supports th a t very 
 identical icoman! Curious, isn't it? Very! Is it all right? 
 "We reckon not ! 
 
 Reader, your humble servant devotedly adores the Christ of 
 Nazareth. That was a Godlike saying, " Neither do I condemn 
 thee ; go thou thy way, and sin no more ! " These divine words 
 forever ring glorious charity-changes through his soul. What's 
 the consequence? "Wiry, simply that he finds it utterly and 
 totally impossible to regard an erring woman with more than 
 ten times the disfavor that he would an erring man ; simply 
 because she has done once what he may do an hundred times 
 without losing caste ! 
 
 If men desire that women shall be faultless angels, let them 
 all insist that they themselves shall set the example. Then, 
 and not till then, will a brothel become a rare, instead of a very 
 common, blotch upon the face of society — whose cellars are 
 very unclean ! 
 
 The queerest excuses are made by Passion's victims, to quiet 
 their own and society's conscience. For instance, the Mormons 
 practise wholesale concubinage, a la his Black Majesty the 
 
180 WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 King of Dahomey, who has the moderate number of 3,333 
 wives! rather overreaching another 
 
 ' ' Mighty king, who'd in one hut 
 Seventy wives, as black as soot, 
 And thirty more of a double smut, — 
 The king of the Cannibal Islands." 
 
 They — the Mormons — practise the vice on the ground that 
 a sanctified sainthood requires a superior race of mortals. The 
 Oneida Perfectionists practise it " for and by the grace of 
 God ; " truly a grace which passeth all understanding ! They 
 remind one of the boys whom the teacher caught using pipes 
 and cigars. One excused himself by the plea that his 
 " stomach ached ; " the second urged " Biles ; " the third one 
 said " I, — /smoke for corns!" So with all natural and un- 
 natural Passionalists, — they " smoke for corns." Others of the 
 same ilk urge various excuses to cover up from themselves their 
 own contempt, but cannot succeed after all. 
 
 As for the writer, he hates these subterfuges, and heartily 
 despises the persons who attain their ends by resorting to such 
 puerile excuses as the above. He found it not impossible to 
 respect Turks, Arabs, and Hindoos, with polygamous tenden- 
 cies, when he was among them. It may be possible for some 
 people to respect even an honest, out-spoken Free Lover, — re- 
 spect him, even when they may forever demur with him on that 
 vital question. "Why? Because such a one hides not behind a 
 pseudo-scientific, philosophic, or religious excuse ; but openly 
 professing to be what he is, gives society a chance to put caution 
 on guard, and play a Roland for his Oliver, — which Roland 
 ought to be an insane retreat. Not so with your sneak-thief 
 Free Lover on Spiritualistic grounds, who at best is but a sen- 
 sual scoundrel in disguise. A stop should speedily be put to 
 his " fun ; " and some of us would hang by the heels the in- 
 famous moral coward who practises it on the plea of "social 
 expedienc3 r ." Just think of it ! 
 
 Still we all know that amativeness is the lion of this Yankee 
 tribe, and that the age is vastly troubled with its morbid ten- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 181 
 
 dencies, and most decided proclivities towards so-called affec- 
 tioual freedom ; nor does it matter in the least whether these be 
 accredited to the insane or decidedly vicious side of human 
 nature ; for in either case the fact is patent ; and this fact, these 
 facts, are not by any means to be treated as unaccountable 
 irregularities ; for they are but the expression of a law of 
 human nature — human development, possibly ; but in either 
 case some people do not like the manifestations, because in ulti- 
 mate results they are frightened by them, and rightly too. 
 
 So far in human history Amativeness has triumphantly 
 laughed at all the penal efforts at limitation — all legal enact- 
 ments for the suppression of its activities ; for the more laws 
 you make to put it down, the more it won't stay put down. 
 What then? Why, instead of spending time in the fruitless 
 endeavor to restrict and restrain this passion, vi et armis, we 
 had much better turn our attention to the laws which govern it, 
 and do our best not only to understand them, but make a judi- 
 cious application of our knowledge toward properly disciplining 
 and civilizing it; which can only be done by teaching every 
 human being that each violation of the Passion-law of nature is 
 a direct sin against the sinner, and must inevitably result in his 
 or her positive distress and misery in the end. 
 
 Legislative experimentalists in all ages have fully demon- 
 strated that it is utterly impossible to prevent practical licen- 
 tiousness. What, then, shall we do ? is the question ; to which 
 the reply is : Throw all possible light upon the general subject, 
 at home, and leave the event with Omnipotent God, who is sure 
 to correct every error in the end. 
 
 You cannot make a man love his wife, nor a woman love her 
 husband, if neither chooses to resort to the only means that can 
 engender true affection, namely, mutual and long-continued 
 endeavor to please. If they don't choose to, or if, after re- 
 peated trials, they have been forced to conclude that mutual 
 love cannot be accomplished, wherein is the justice of attempting 
 to compel such persons to endure their constantly accreting 
 misery and discontent? (except always the mutual protection 
 and care of the children.) If there be justice in thus compelling 
 
182 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 them, the writer, for one, is unable to discern it. Evidently, in 
 cases of such desperate aversion, soul, not body, founded, 
 it seems reasonable to conclude that such people should be 
 apart, for to make them stay together, under the ban of disgrace 
 if they shall separate, is to set a premium upon harlotry, liber- 
 tinism, misery, violence, and murder, and all other crimes mis- 
 guided man is capable of enacting. And yet the bond itself 
 should be indissoluble, to prevent future mistakes, unless a 
 mixed jury of men and women see good reasons for annulling 
 it, after a fair and open trial of the issue ! 
 
 Mere physical love is not, never was, and perhaps never will 
 be restricted to pairs. We are sorry for this ; but it is a fact, 
 nevertheless ; and if it be true that whosoever looketh upon 
 another with amorous eyes is guilty of adultery, the writer is 
 afraid there will be a very long string of one sort of sinners at 
 the judgment-seat ! For his part he wishes it were not so, and 
 that it were possible to make John love Sarah ; but it cannot 
 be accomplished, for people will love who, when, how, and 
 where attraction may compel, despite all the statutes in crea- 
 tion. All we can do is to teach them the divine art of self-con- 
 trol ; and that is all we want to do. In the good time coming, 
 we devoutly hope that people will marry according to the 
 canons of common sense, as well as those of law and gospel ; 
 and then there will be no domestic storms, no chance for the 
 pranks of philosophic libertines, or radical amazonian harlots, 
 ingrain, and disguise ; nor will the new-fangled doctrine find 
 advocates — or victims — which teaches that somewhere or other, 
 in this life or the other worlds, every man and woman will be 
 sure to find, some time or other, his or her " eternal affinity" 
 or conjugal better-half. Now eternal affinity is mfernal non- 
 sense, because — it is I and is too stupid an idea to merit re- 
 spectable notice, or engage the pen now writing. 
 
 Unions between individuals hereafter may last for ages, and 
 it may be that eternity, to us, may consist in a perfect blending 
 of individual " A " with all and every of the rest of the 
 infinite human alphabet ; and thus the cycle of human destiny 
 and happiness be rendered full and complete. One thing is 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 183 
 
 certain, and that is : Every one is capable of giving and receiv- 
 ing joy of some kind from every other within the limits of time 
 and space. 
 
 Herein before was used the phrase " perfect blending ; " now 
 by this expression is not meant a mere passing union of one 
 person with every other, but is meant a cycle — be it long or 
 short — of thorough experimental, disciplinary friendliness and 
 sympathy, with every other. This may not be probable, yet is 
 far from impossible. If it be true, what joys await us all in the 
 great Hereafter ! What an awful lengthening out of eternity 
 at once presents ! — indeed it is only by such speculations as 
 this that we are enabled to form even a proximate notion of the 
 tremendous year of Infinity. At this point it is very hard to 
 restrain the brain and pen — so tempting is the lure before 
 both. Notoriously the institution of society, as it exists, 
 brings unmatched couples together, keeps them so, and sunders 
 and keeps asunder those which are in accordance with the 
 dicta of a superior law. Out of this state of things, when it 
 unmistakably proceeds from the natural antagonism of the 
 general make-up of the married parties, and is not the 
 result of mere whim, or physical disease, — spring the vices of 
 avarice, Boul-poyerty, corruption of taste, affection and judg- 
 ment, jealousy and secret crime. The laws of heaven and 
 men must be blended together ; if they are not truly blended, let 
 us try to make them so. Monogamy is the theory of civilized 
 life, but, owing to ignorance and abuse, polygamous habits are 
 most notoriously the practice. What a pity that Christendom 
 is not more consistent ! 
 
 Society has no right to force a woman to live with a man 
 whose presence and embrace bring perpetual illness to her 
 body and grief to her heart ; or a man with a woman who does 
 the same ; for the atmosphere arising from such a household is 
 rank poison to every community, and the social disease there 
 festering is sure to attack others, just as does that from the 
 cholera or small-pox ; only that these last destroy bodies, but the 
 former injures human souls ; nor is there any good reason why 
 one should be tolerated, and the other not. 
 
184 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 It may be necessary that such a couple part, yet neither 
 should be free to render others wretched ; for the legal bond 
 should remain intact until six women and six men, all twelve 
 just and honest, shall patiently hear both parties, decide the 
 case, and, if necessary, adjudicate a divorce, which the signa- 
 ture of a judge shall render final and complete. 
 
 It is a very old theory, originating before the days of Christ, 
 and now in vogue all over the world to a gi-eater or less extent, 
 that the state of the saints in heaven is one of complex mar- 
 rage ; by which latter term, as applied to heaven, is implied all 
 that the word conveys on earth. The writer does not take any 
 stock in that notion whatever ; but he knows that a great many 
 people in Yankeedom and all over the land practically carry 
 out on earth the oriental doctrine referred to ; for a wife at 
 home, and a "Miss" or two somewhere else, is as common a 
 practice in Christendom as is dual-marriage under Islamic law. 
 Theoretically, of course, the thing is both denied and de- 
 nounced, but is notoriously true and common for all that, deny 
 or denounce, who may ; for both wives and husbands often carry 
 out the habit in extenso. 
 
 There's a very strong tendency toward marital complexity, 
 running around loose in these days, judging from the papers, 
 divorces and murders now so common ; and daily hundreds of 
 women desert their lords, and husbands abandon their wives. 
 Nor are these declarers of personal independence all from the 
 lower or poorer strata of society, or from the savage sections of 
 civilization, or from the huge paws or the ungainly mudsills ; 
 for it is notorious that the j^oke of wedlock often rests quite as 
 heavily on the "higher orders" as upon the lower; in conse- 
 quence of which we are often treated to the t3*pe-recitals of 
 escapades of many a right reverend father in God, proving that, 
 after all, human nature will be human nature still, whether be- 
 neath a surplice, cassock, or tire of linsey-woolsey ; and prov- 
 ing, again, that there is something rotten at the bottom of 
 society which needs the application of a moral antiseptic, the 
 best possible sort of one being simple human justice, reason 
 
WOMAN) LOVE) AND MARRIAGE. 185 
 
 and common honesty, in equal proportions, constantly applied, 
 by each to his or her own case. 
 
 How very curious it is that, as a general thing, the stronger 
 a man is intellectually, the weaker he is in his sensational or 
 amative nature ! The man who can stir a nation to its pro- 
 fouudest depths by the magic of his mind, pen, or speech, can 
 easily be reduced to the pliancy of a sick kitten by a pair of 
 sparkling e}*es, or the wanton play of a couple of death-dealing 
 ringlets. Compensation ! That's the operation of the Law of 
 Heaven's justice, and is one of the ways by which Dame 
 Nature squares her books and balances her accounts. 
 
 If a husband sins against his wife, he is apt to put on a long 
 face for a da}' or two : half-repentantly asks for, and quite con- 
 fidently expects, pardon. Nor in vain ; for it is woman's 
 nature to forgive, or at least put on the semblance thereof; but 
 really, it is a doubtful question if ever yet a woman really for- 
 gave this sin. But, on the other hand, if she sins even once, 
 he, ah ! he regards it as a high crime, not only against his own 
 particular peace or comfort, but against the entire moral code, 
 unless he devotedly loves her ; then he forgives all. 
 
 Some one said : Many a true heart, that would have come 
 back like a dove to the ark after its first transgression, has been 
 frightened beyond recall by the savage character of an unfor- 
 giving spirit ; and that some one spoke God's truth. 
 
 What a splendid lesson, that of Charity — no ; but Justice 
 — will be when man shall learn the golden rule, and practically 
 act upon it ! 
 
 Fairness, if nothing deeper, requires that as much lenity 
 should be shown to erring woman as to erring man. Woman 
 will forgive man nine and ninety times over, when he sins 
 against her general peace. Let but the recreant whine a little, 
 and say he's " sorry," and forthwith she cleans the slate, to her 
 eternal renown be it said. Why, then, should not man be quite 
 as noble ? 
 
 Most men rather like Daniel E. Sickles, not because he took 
 such a terrible means to wipe out a sorrowful blot, but because 
 he did, once in his life, what many a woman, to all intents and 
 
186 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 purposes, at least, does fifty times a year, — forgave the truant 
 and took her to his heart again. May the God of Heaven for- 
 ever bless him for that one noble, manly act ! In the day of 
 days that one grand deed will, in God's balance, outweigh a 
 million sins of his. 
 
 Many a woman will bury her sorrow in her own heart, and 
 say never a word about it to her husband or any one else, rankle 
 though the memory may, and fret her very heart-strings out. 
 She will live with him, do for him, keep his home and rear his 
 children, even though she cannot forgive or forget that he has 
 forsaken her side to revel in a harlot's arms ! Talk of self-deny- 
 ing martyrs after that ! Why, there are millions of just such 
 moral-heroine martyrs in the land, thousands in every State, 
 hundreds in every country, scores in every town, and specimens 
 in every village over our entire broad domain ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A certain sea-captain once upon a time encountered an old 
 peddler-woman as he was going on ship-board. 
 
 " Buy something," she cried, " buy something, will ye not, 
 my bonny laird o' the seas?" Said he, "Good dame, I have 
 no money with me, — only a single penny, — and you have 
 nothing to sell at that price." — " Indeed, then, captain, but I 
 have." — "What? " — " Wit, d'ye ken? " — " Let's have a 
 pennyworth." — "So ye shall, — take that;" and she handed 
 him a bit of paper. He took it ; went on board, put the scrap 
 of paper away, and forgot it for two years. In the mean 
 time he had been to India — grown rich — was on his last 
 return voyage, — had nearly reached home, when he accidentally 
 came across the old woman's scrap of paper. " Ah ! " said he, 
 " here's the penny's-worth of wit I bought on the day we sailed 
 for the Indies. Let's see what it amounts to. Ah 1 here it 
 is: — 
 
WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 187 
 
 " ' Your mistress lores for lust and gold ; 
 Your wife — she loves ye for your soul. 
 Believe me not, but try and see 
 TVhich of the twain will truest be. 
 
 " ' "When sorrow comes and woes descend, 
 See which ■will prove the truest friend — 
 Which heart is round thee truest knit, — 
 This is your penny's-worth of wit.'" 
 
 " By the great Hook-block ! -well said," remarked the 
 captain. 
 
 In due time the ship arrived. He dressed himself in a splen- 
 did suit, over which he threw a sailor's coarse and tarry garb. 
 Then he went to the police, told of his intention, had officers 
 properly posted, and then went and knocked at the door of one 
 of his own sumptuously-furnished houses in which resided, — 
 maintained by the seaman's gold, — the seaman's mistress. 
 She came to the door, — he entered. " What in heaven's name 
 have you come in that dress for ? Bah ! you smell badly ! — 
 Tar and such filth, oh ! Are you mad ? " — " No, my dear ! 
 not mad, but unfortunate — wrecked at sea. Not a dollar left ; 
 besides, I care not for dollars ; this is my house ; this my furni- 
 ture, — you are my best beloved ! Come, save me ! — hide me; 
 in a quarrel i" have killed a man, and ! " — " O you blood}'- 
 minded villain — that will do ! Who are you ? Where did you 
 come from? — Oh, dear, I shall faint. Police ! Police ! " The 
 officers were close at hand ; they entered the house, and — 
 " Arrest that ragged sailor man. He's a murderer ! Oh ! oh ! 
 I shall die with fright. I don't know him, except that he has 
 killed a man ! " The officers smiled. The captain tore off his 
 disguise and stood revealed in his fine attire. He laughed ha ! 
 ha ! threw down bundle after bundle of crisp and heavy bank- 
 notes upon the table, at sight of which she laughed too. " Dear 
 me, what a joke ! I knew all the while you was funnivg" said 
 she. " I loved, and ever will love you, dearly ! I knew you 
 had not killed anybody, and" — "Vile strumpet, leave this 
 house. Officers, put her out ! " An hour 
 
188 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 later he knocked at the door of another house ; told the same 
 story, and — " For God's sake, my poor husband, let me hide 
 you in the cellar ! " — then she admitted the officers of the law. 
 " Yes, such a sailor-man had been there ; but had run through 
 the house, escaped by the back door, and if they'd hurry after 
 him they might find him." Why continue the tale? The cap- 
 tain was satisfied with his purchase, — the best penny invest- 
 ment ever made. The old Avoman, in after years, felt glad she 
 had sold her wares so well, and perhaps, reader, we too shall be 
 wiser hereafter than before ; at least, we will not be likely soon 
 to forget the lesson conveyed by this story of the captain, his 
 mistress, the faithful wife, or 
 
 THE PENNV'S-WORTH OF WIT. 
 
 "What constitutes the charm of not merely the modern belle, 
 but of nine women in every ten, judged by what we see alone? 
 It is rather a puzzling matter to decide whether the charms lay 
 in their divinity or their dimity. But when the two are well 
 and fairly weighed, and the woman is once seen en dishabille, 
 the dimity carries in it a gallop, and divinity goes up in a bal- 
 loon. Now when a man is humbugged by dimity, mistakes it 
 for divinity, marries it, and finds his cloth is all illusion, and 
 his angel a very poor specimen of very poor clay, he's to be 
 pitied ; but what of her ? Is she not guilty of a positive crime ? 
 and if she reaps the reward, of it, who's to blame ? for, undoubt- 
 edly, more men are taken in and done for through the sensual 
 fascinations of dress than are fairly won by womanhood and 
 genuine worth. 
 
 Women, in these days, when millinery is the finest art on the 
 globe, — perverted art it is, — dress so well that themselves are 
 lost in a maze of sense-compelling witchery. More dress ! mere 
 dress ! What with laces and jewels and transcendent curls, and 
 heart-destroying wavy lines, and frills and panniers and boots ! 
 — oh, the boots, the boots, the magic boots, with silvery buck- 
 le — ers ! and the gloves, and the scents, and the sense, and 
 the illusion ! — O Lord ! it's all illusion — especially when after- 
 ward a man beholds an unearthly-looking being, standing like 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 189 
 
 a single mast inside a hoop-skirt in the morning ! — the morn- 
 ing ! as he looks at the trappings on the chair and then at — her? 
 — no, IT — standing there before the glass putting lily-white on 
 her neck, rouge on her cheeks, pencilling her eyebrows, and 
 smiling as she thinks of Mm — "Oh, how is this for high?" 
 and he — he quotes Shakespeare and says, referring to the 
 make-up and the made-up maiden, too : — 
 
 " Can such things be, and overcome us 
 Like a summer cloud?" ' 
 
 - Then he cuts short the quotation and adds: "She did over- 
 come me — you bet ! " and then he groans a groan, while she 
 smiles a smile and calls him "Ducky," when he knows he was a 
 goose, whose experience paralleled the sailor's, 
 
 " Who went on hoard, — the truth he'd tell, 
 Because the boatswain had rigged her well 
 With her tacks and sheets and her bowlines too, 
 And the colors flying, red, white and blue." 
 
 And both were privateered ! 
 
 The flummery disease is almost universal, and all women 
 have it — old, young, rich, poor, high, low ; virtuous, vicious, 
 black, white and off-color — they have got it large, and badly, 
 and all of them, in their several spheres, are most beautifully 
 calculated not only to inflame her own, but to fire the passions 
 of the opposite sex. The writer does not think that beauty 
 unadorned is adorned the most, but does think that most of it 
 is altogether over-adorned and ovei'-done, and consequently a 
 great many women are tm-done. A little better judgment in 
 regard to dress would greatly tend toward the elevation of 
 public morals, and the depression of public scandal. Eight 
 dresses in every twelve worn by ladies en promenade, are 
 directly calculated to make the heart of any susceptible man 
 beat strangely-wild tattoos, and to suggest thoughts not 
 healthful to his soul by any manner of means. A female should 
 so dress as to excite a man's admiration for her more solid 
 characteristies ; but instead of that, passion rules the hour, and 
 
 
190 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 she so arranges her toilet that the man who beholds her speedily 
 loses sight of the woman in the sex alone, and, though he ex- 
 press it not, indulges in insane dreams of passional emotion, 
 and feels that he would readily dare all things to obtain what, 
 if possessed, would prove a dearly bought whistle, inasmuch as 
 the reaction upon himself, when he came to look the matter 
 over, would make him despise his mother's only son, and con- 
 sider himself in anything but a favorable light. 
 
 A rightly wedded couple derive quite as much happiness from 
 the oftentimes unrecognized and mutual play of physical spheres, 
 as from the play and action of elements and qualities of the 
 morals, the heart and the intellect. Indeed, more frequently is 
 marriage a plrysical union, yet comparatively a happy one, than 
 it is a blending of minds or a fusion of moral spheres. 
 
 When a couple respond to each other in all departments of 
 our great nature, as a matter of course, perfect reciprocity and 
 unanimity exist. It is doubtful if many such unions there are. 
 What then ? Why, as nothing earthly is perfect, and as most 
 of us are unable to find our exact " affinities " or counter-parts, 
 and probably could not get them if we should, is it not decidedy 
 better for us to endeavor to adapt our spheres to each other, 
 than to spend our time in grumbling at our respective lots? for 
 it is possible to kindle a lasting union, and a happy one, by 
 studying ourselves and each other ; by bearing, forbearing, and 
 in systematic adaptation and conciliation we can mend matters 
 if we will but try. 
 
 Home-work, drudgery and wretchedness fall not to Lot's 
 wife, but lots of wives, while home-joys — such as they are — 
 fall to the husband's share, and his wife has no share in them 
 whatever. Exhibitions and demonstrations of home love are 
 like meat dinners to a bonny braw John Hieland man — a devil- 
 ish rare commodity or event, alwaj-s unexpected, paroxysmal, 
 spasmodic, fitful, — a lady looking over the pen now as it is 
 gliding over the paper says, "It is exceedingly damnical!" 
 because it is of impulse and blood, not of principle and soul, 
 wherefore it is always one-sided and leaves a dreadful sting 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 191 
 
 behind, — Nature's great protest against the desecration of her 
 holiest altar, Marriage, in its true intent and meaning ! 
 
 What the mental agony of the female must be, who has to 
 act the part of an unwilling priestess in such a dreadful orgy, — 
 for sacrament it is not, — only a woman and a wife can know ; 
 and its terrors not even she can verbally express ! Could we read 
 the scroll of many a woman's mind, we would find lines expressive 
 of unutterable loathing ; while in others we would discover not 
 a few secret resolves to bear the burden with assumed patience, 
 and to pay it off with interest upon the very first suitable oc- 
 casion. " Don't believe it, ha? " Well, sirs, tell us the source 
 of the numberless Hasons, elopements and suicides ; explain 
 this thing on any other ground than that of conjugal barbarity, 
 affectional thirst, and love-starvation, and we will admit that 
 the view here taken is a wrong one. But until you do this 
 every third woman will tell you we are right. 
 
 Physiological love in men is selfish as a general thing, be- 
 cause it is unhealthy. Woman's love-nature is not so. She is 
 never or very seldom selfish, but from Eve down to the last 
 woman is anxious, in every possible and conceivable way, to 
 give a thousand-fold more than she receives, — vampires ex- 
 cepted. A wife yields points, even those which wreck her 
 health and endanger her life, ten thousand times to every 
 single sacrificial concession her husband makes to her. 
 
 Men very seldom consult their wives, and notoriously do not 
 just when, if ever, they should do so. Yet the wives put up 
 with it all from the bridal to the burial of their hopes, if not their 
 mortal frames, for a great many men never fairly develop up 
 to manness, but flourish in immortal piggitude to the last. 
 
 It may be safely laid down as an axiom for the benefit of 
 everybody, that none but a human brute would constantly, as 
 too many do, force the inclinations of a wife, or even offer, by 
 implication, an odious circumstance upon any woman — even 
 a professional courtesan, much less upon the very being whom 
 he has deliberately sworn to cherish and protect — (she needs 
 most protection from himself!) — and whom he calls by that 
 most sacred title, wife. None but a suicidal fool, we repeat. 
 
192 woman; lofe, and marriage. 
 
 will be guilt}'' of an act so supremely, so detestably, infamously, 
 unreasonably, dastardly, mean ! The true connubial life is a feast 
 fit for the immortal Gods, but is, alas ! too often partaken of 
 by immortal goats who are unwilliug to appreciate this truth, 
 else we should see the evidence of their reformation in the bright 
 eyes and rosy cheeks of their wives, where we now behold 
 sunken orbs, sullen visage, uncertain step, and hectic cheeks. 
 
 The rule of Right is never wrong : Love should ever remain 
 holy, both parties inspired with health, and healthful love, for 
 self and each other. Otherwise, the draught will, in the finale, 
 prove to have been a bitter one. 
 
 No being under God's heaven has a right to promote his own 
 joy at the cost of his own conscience, or the agony, mental or 
 otherwise, of another, no matter what his legal right may be in 
 the premises ; they are all superseded by human rights, the 
 first of which is self-preservation, and the right to resist inhu- 
 man rites. 
 
 A man's wife is, or ought to be, his other and his better part. 
 Such is the human and the divine intent of the mystic tie be- 
 tween them, nor may he even in thought, wrong her of any 
 single prerogative accorded by all laws human and divine. 
 Being part of himself she ought to partake of all his joys ; but 
 she don't ! — while he takes good care that she bears all her own 
 sorrows and his pains and cares besides. When a man falls 
 short of his duty in these respects, that very man desecrates 
 her and himself. Selfishness, however, produces its own pun- 
 ishment ; first, in a deprivation of happiness, and second, by posi- 
 tively injuring his own constitution and nature, — mental, physi 
 cal, moral, nervous. If people would think more of marital rights 
 and less of marital rites, the world would be much better for it 
 
 As a general thing, men are too impatient to reach the 
 sought-for goal — are too fast altogether — too wrapped up in 
 self; too inconsiderate. Reader, there is a whole volume in 
 these last lines. Please read and ponder them well, for there's 
 wisdom therein. 
 
 " Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat ; " and whoso 
 would be happy must attain that end by making others so 1 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 193 
 
 Says Fowler, or some other not over-sage writer on Love : 
 " By all the happiness, O woman ! which you are capable of 
 bestowing and receiving in married life, I beg you to note well 
 every invitation to Love's banquet, and to cordially respond," 
 [provided they don't come too often, and when prompted by 
 mere blood-fever, — adds the author of this work.] Fowler : — 
 " Coldness and squeamishness on your part will dampen his 
 pleasure, and therefore his love." [A word just here. If a 
 man's love to his wife depends upon her readiness to yield to 
 his caprices, then we beg leave to dissent, and to quote the 
 remark of a daughter of New England, who said to the author : 
 " Casca, most men are, on the subject of love and women, 
 utterly crazy — or worse. If a female gives them an inch, 
 they will claim, not an ell, but five hundred million yards ! 
 They will draw out our affections, repay us in flatteries and 
 compliments, and then demonstrate their honor and manhood 
 by the most disgusting advances and direct proposals, teeming 
 with infamy up to the brim. They call this hateful thing Love ! 
 O heavens ! It may be love, but if it is, then excuse me, 
 sir, but I say, damn such love ! — forever and for aye ! " Casca 
 Llanna agreed with the lady, and resumes the quotation :] 
 " Your cold repulse or petulant refusal, persisted in, will prove 
 the death-blow of conjugal felicity to you both — a blighting 
 wind to his fondest hopes ; for it will force upon him the dregs 
 and lees of the marriage-cup, in lieu of the delicious nectar, the 
 joyous wine of life, which every man has a right to drink from 
 the hymeneal fountain." 
 
 There's considerable sound sense in that. Let us continue 
 the strain a little longer, and add: "But if you watch the 
 rising tide of love and dalliance, and meet it as it only should 
 be met, with the true, heartfelt and welcome response, you at 
 once rekindle Love's pure flame, and crown your blessed union 
 with the green garlands of human happiness, full, complete, and 
 unsullied." Fowler: — " But remember, O wife, that nothing 
 will strain the cords of his respect for you as unwomanly treat- 
 ment — which will bring a shock of disappointment that will 
 soon ripen into hatred." Why ? Because the reciprocated and 
 13 
 
194 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 pure love is the natural expression of marriage, and it is the 
 very fountain of all human attraction, beauty, energy, and true 
 might. It underlies every manifestation of human power ; and 
 if you wantonly, wilfully, choke off, strangle, or poison that, 
 you inaugurate disease, contention, and living death upon the 
 very throne of Life itself. If, on the other hand, you purely, 
 lovingly, healthfully, can and icill respond to his unworded 
 wish, and gracefully permit that noble homage which true affec- 
 tion ever seeks to pay the object of its adoration, you will 
 speedily cure his love of the chills and fevers to which it is 
 sometimes subject, and bring back to health both the man and 
 his passions. This rejuvenescence of marital love will go on 
 intensifying, deepening and spreading, until both his nature 
 and j'our own will become divested of all irregularities, and 
 life prove a garden of perennial joys. Properly controlled, the 
 instincts of nature can produce none but good results. If 
 people will only make a persistent effort toward self-subjugation, 
 the amative instinct will become disciplined, orderly, and de- 
 veloped. But it, like evei^-thing else that is at loose ends and 
 unruly, needs a taut rein and steady effort. Under this train- 
 ing it will soon shape itself, and all fierceness, disorder, brutal- 
 ity and grossness which now, alas ! so often mark its opera- 
 tions, will cease one by one, and finally disappear forever and 
 forever. God speed their last day ! 
 
 It would be well for all wives to remember that constant and 
 fretful denial on their part, without an effort towards adapta- 
 tion, when that is possible, directly tends to exaggerate and 
 intensify all the abominable conditions attendant upon the mar- 
 ried state of some people. On some men these refusals have a 
 terrible effect ; marital infidelity becomes a prominent subject, 
 first of thought, finally of act. These views commend them- 
 selves to the consideration of every thoughtful man and woman. 
 May the seed here sown fall on good soil, and bear a golden 
 fruitage, is the writer's humble but soul-felt prayer. 
 
 " What do } T ou propose in cases where one party overflows 
 with love, and the other is totally without it?" asks the reader. 
 We reply : " The superabundance of love, instead of being 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 195 
 
 eternally suggestive of but one mode of action, and that its 
 very lowest and least important of its hundreds of others, 
 should manifest itself in the ten thousand little trifles of every- 
 day life, until at last a spark from one will, nay, must, kindle 
 the flame in the other. The kind word, the silent praise, the 
 tender, loving glance, the honeyed kiss, the affectionate em- 
 brace, — in short, the "cuddlings" of admiring affection will 
 speedily balance accounts and equalize the circulation of the 
 divine principle. Fire in one and ice in the other will produce 
 warmth in both ; for although reciprocity does not exist at first, 
 yet it can be achieved. " Where there's a will there's a wa} r ." 
 It only needs a little "try" to work wonders in that regard. 
 It is not difficult to so conduct one's self as to inspire love, 
 respect, and even veneration. The effort is well worth making. 
 Well pursued it never fails ! 
 
 All women, wives especially, demand homage, and whoever 
 refuses to grant it is not wise. There are no ugly women. 
 All, vampires excepted, are good, beautiful and true, only that 
 some wear life-long marks, as said before. If a man appreciates 
 his wife, and lets her find it out, the man don't live who can by 
 arts, fair or foul, seduce her from her dignity to herself, or alle- 
 giance to her lord ! There's no mistake about that matter. If 
 there is, then the writer's life-long study of the sex has been of 
 no avail. No woman likes the man who is insensible to her 
 mental worth, moral and domestic excellence, or to her charms 
 of person. " Hell has no fury like a woman scorned," says the 
 adage. Potiphar's wife is an illustration. We read that that 
 lady hated Joseph tremendously after that circumspect individual 
 refused allegiance and homage to her charms. Why? Be- 
 cause the reaction on her part was in strict accordance with a 
 fundamental law of human nature, — that of self-esteem and 
 love of admiration. 
 
 We seldom forgive those who, wantonly or otherwise, offend 
 our amour propre. Perhaps this common human trait is the 
 result of wrong education and surroundings, — but it is a posi- 
 tive trait nevertheless. We know that this thing will change 
 with time, and be better in the good future now winging its way 
 
196 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 hither. But, " human nature is at present a veiy crooked 
 stick," and probably was no straighter in Joseph's day. 
 
 To make mutual concession, is to gain many a point, other- 
 wise unattainable. Cheerful conciliation on the part of a wife 
 to her husband ought to, and in the majority of cases will, 
 soften him, even though his nature be coarse and semi-brutal. 
 To fairly state the case, and gracefully submit our own private 
 judgment to that of another, is often the very best possible 
 method of gaining an end ; and when a husband realizes that his 
 wife for his sake endures what is to her disagreeable, his pity 
 is aroused, his gratitude excited, and all the higher faculties 
 of his soul plead trumpet-tongued in the wife's behalf. This is 
 another trait of human nature. In such a case passion becomes 
 subdued, and Love asserts supremacy. He cannot, and still be 
 a Man, take advantage of his power, — pleasure in a wife's 
 pain ; nor can he gloat in a sacrifice at the expense of one whose 
 love he feels to be his own ! 
 
 Scolding, blaming, stamping, threatening, on either side, can 
 do no possible good whatever. Unripe apples are poor eat- 
 ing! 
 
 Negroes, Indians, coarse men of all nations can stand all 
 sorts of nervous drain ten times more than a delicate-nerved, 
 brainful, high-toned, fine boned-man. And it is also a fact that 
 the man of coarse body, habits, and tastes, can resist tempta- 
 tion fifty times easier than the man of finer body and intenser 
 nature. And for this reason we find less peccadilloes among 
 the coarse, than among the finer nerved, for in the latter case 
 the person is beset with an appetite ground on lightning and 
 tipped with ethereal fire, against which only the loftiest human 
 will can successfully stand ; and as elsewhere said, the only 
 hope of such, when attacked, is flight, instant flight from the 
 tempter and temptation. 
 
 When a man is not exhausted he is far more able to resist 
 the lascivious demon, than he ever can be while occasionally 
 giving way to a loose rein. 
 
 Old bachelors are a nuisance, and a certain sort of old maids 
 a worse one. Only when a man has lived as husband and father, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 197 
 
 and a woman as wife and mother, can the truest human devel- 
 opment be achieved, and human j'03's be tasted : for the joys of 
 parentage are infinitely dearer to man and woman in some re- 
 spects, than any other pertaining to earthly existence ; and 
 soul people regard the man who hates babies, as a cannibal, 
 and a woman who does so, as a soulless monstrosity, and so they 
 are. 
 
 The nervous system of both husband and wife are so many 
 manufactories wherein is made the varied fluid lightnings 
 which course with wonderful speed over the entire, mighty hu- 
 man being, in all its parts, external, internal and inmost. The 
 one fluid is intensely male, the other intensely female. There 
 are occasions when these two fluids meet, and when they do, they 
 instantly change from fluid to aura-form, and with the speed of 
 light, traverse the entire nervous ocean of either and both, pen- 
 etrating body, spirit and soul, binding both wife and husband 
 in chains lighter than air, yet stronger than tempered steel, cre- 
 ating joys too vast for tongue to tell or pen to write. This is 
 Love ! 
 
 Sappho knew this great truth, for she says : — 
 
 " In all I pleased, but most in what is best; 
 And the last joy was dearer than the rest; 
 Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired, 
 You still enjoyed, and yet you still desired, 
 Till all the soul in holy transport lay, 
 And mind itself in rapture died away. " 
 
 The time will come when man shall learn the art of sell- 
 preservation quite as well as he now understands the methods 
 of its destruction ; but first he must know the difference be- 
 tween love and lust, and understand that only virtuous jo} r s, in 
 holy, happy, heaven-sanctioned wedlock, are those that can 
 build up his manhood, and render life a path of roses instead 
 of a lane of thorns. He has yet to learn that, in order to reach 
 a blissful human pleasure, he must turn from the road of excess, 
 and find out how to 
 
 Moderate his joy, 
 
 Nor in his pleasure all his might employ. 
 
198 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 Then never suspect, without good grounds, the fidelity of your 
 mate, nor fancy her or his conduct to be bad till the facts are 
 known, and not then till well proven, for hatreds, fancies and 
 jealousies are, like false love, often but a reflex of the selfhood. 
 This chapter cannot better be ended than with the following, 
 because it is precisely what the writer himself thinks ! The 
 editor in chief of the " New York Tribune," writing to Theodore 
 Tilton, says : — 
 
 " I do not assume that my views on the woman question are 
 of much consequence to others ; but, in so far as they may 
 possess interest, it is well that they be clearly understood. Let 
 me, then, indicate your misapprehensions, without further pre- 
 face. 
 
 "1. You say I ' hold that there ought to be no divorce at all 
 — not for any crime, even the worst.' So far as I can recollect, 
 your only authority for this statement is a remark that, had not 
 the Master spoken otherwise, I would not have deemed adultery 
 a sufficient reason for dissolving a marriage. As you seem to 
 have given these words undue weight, allow me to explain my 
 view more fully. 
 
 " That persistent, flagitious adultery in husband or wife 
 affords good cause for divorce, I have not meant to deny. 
 But there have been cases of transient infidelity to marriage 
 vows, under the influence of passions inflamed by wine and 
 other unnatural excitements, which, being followed by prompt 
 and profound contrition, I would not judge an adequate reason 
 for divorce. You and I both know that wives have often par- 
 doned such lapses in husbands ; you and I agree that husbands 
 have no rightful immunity in such matters which ought not also 
 to be accorded to wives. And I profoundly honor and rever- 
 ence the husband who can say to his erring wife, ' Though I 
 know that you have been false to God and to me, yet, because 
 of the love I have borne you, of the vow which pledged me to 
 love and cherish you till death, and for the sake of the dear 
 children which God has given us, I, believing you truly peni- 
 tent, will forgive and try almost to forget your crime, and thus 
 shield our little ones from undeserved shame.' I regard the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. g 199 
 
 husband who thus speaks and acts as a better Christian, a truer 
 man, than is he who exposes, discards and outlaws the wife of 
 his youth for a flagrant transgression, now sincerely and bit- 
 terly repented. I suggest, therefore, that you henceforth rep- 
 resent me as holding that adultery may, but does not always, 
 justify an application for divorce. 
 
 " II. You say I hold that ' if a man marries and his wife 
 dies, there should be no second marriage.' This, also, is too 
 sweeping. Some of my best and most esteemed friends are 
 remarried — happily, I am sure ; wisely and nobly, I judge. 
 Nay ; I can imagine a case in which the poor, hard-working, 
 widowed father of young children, whom he cannot take with 
 him to his daily labor, should feel constrained for their sake to 
 replace his lost wife by another in whose perfect acceptance and 
 discharge of a mother's duties toward those children he could 
 implicitly trust. Pardon me, but I am quite confident that the 
 casual remark on which you based your broad assertion referred 
 to a remarriage following separation by divorce, not death. 
 
 " III. Let me state my own conception of remarriages as 
 complicating marital relations in the other world. 
 
 " I do not dispute the doctrine of Jesus that ' in heaven there 
 is neither marrying nor giving in marriage,' if 3 t ou have quoted 
 His words exactly. And yet I feel that there are couples so 
 completely and happily united in this world that they will be 
 nearer and dearer to each other, in the next, than they would or 
 could have been had they failed to meet in this life ; and I think 
 these are happier in either world than though one or both of 
 them had remarried. I do not hold that either would have been 
 culpable in remarrying if widowed on this planet ; I only insist 
 that they will both rejoice — and with reason — in their higher 
 life, that neither in this life was married a second time. 
 
 " IV. You are entirely, eminently right, Mr. Editor, in assert- 
 ing that my conviction of the proper indissolubility of marriage 
 is the mainspring of my hostility to woman suffrage and to the 
 social philosophy from which many vainly seek to separate the 
 woman movement. Though I have written or dictated very 
 little of what has during the last ten years been printed as 
 
200 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 editorial in the ' Tribune ' on this subject, it is nevertheless true 
 that my conception of the nature and scope of the marriage 
 relation renders my conversion to woman suffrage a moral im- 
 possibility. 
 
 " I have but two left of seven children, and these are both 
 daughters. I would gladly fit them for lives of usefulness and 
 honor, as beloved and loving wives of virtuous, upright, noble 
 men, and mothers, if it shall please God, of good, healthy, 
 happy children. If it be decreed that they are to be, not such 
 women as those I have most admired and reverenced, but men 
 with a female physique — powerful in ward caucuses and nom- 
 inating conventions, vehement in senate and on the stump, and 
 effective before juries in the trial of actions for crim. con. — I 
 pray that my career on this globe shall close before theirs is 
 fairly begun. When and where they shall thus shine, it will not 
 be pleasant for me to stay. 
 
 " Mr. Editor, I believe our own countrymen are indebted to 
 you for having discovered (perhaps I should say invented) me 
 as a possible (though most improbable) candidate for the Pres- 
 idency. Allow me, then, to thank you for your early and frank 
 demonstration that I can in no contingency be counted on or 
 hoped for as a woman suffrage candidate. As you forcibly and 
 justly say, there is not even a remote possibility of my ulti- 
 mately adapting myself to this end. My difference with your 
 crowd is too vital, too radical, to permit the most sanguine 
 dreamer to hope for my conversion. I am growing old ; my 
 opinions are tolerably firm ; and the advanced female of the 
 Laura Fair type, who kills the paramour of whom she claims 
 to be the rightful affinity, and gives the lie in open court to the 
 wife she has doubly widowed, is my pet aversion. 
 
 " But why should any man be the candidate for President of 
 the woman suffragists ? Logically and consistently, I feel that 
 their candidate should be a woman. She ought, moreover, to 
 be one thoroughly emancipated from the " absurdity and folly," 
 the " narrowness," and the " baleful conservatism," which I am 
 now too old to outgrow. Could you not find one who illustrates 
 in her own person and history what you so felicitously term ' the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 201 
 
 liberal thought of an enlightened age " ? Let her be one who 
 has two husbands after a sort, and lives in the same house with 
 them both, sharing the couch of one, but bearing the name of 
 the other (to indicate her impartiality perhaps), and cause and 
 candidate will be so fitly mated that there will be no occasion, 
 even under the most liberal, progressive, enlightened regime, 
 to sue for their divorce. Could not one of this class be per- 
 suaded to overbear her shrinking modesty and nominate herself? 
 
 " In a spirit of hearty hatred for free love and all its infernal 
 delusions, 
 
 " I remain yours, Horace Greeley. 
 
 " Tribune Office, Aug. 7, 1871." 
 
 CHAPTER XTV. 
 
 Ik consequence of the almost universally diseased state of hu- 
 man love-nature in this civilized world, but especially in these 
 United States, and particularly in New England, people, the 
 majority of whom are females, have gone daft, and given birth 
 and currencj' to a vast deal of unhealthy thought, all bearing 
 more or less directly upon love, marriage, and divorce ; and 
 scores of long-haired, lantern-jawed philosophers yelp, howl, and 
 whine out, year after year, from the public rostra of the land, 
 long and insane demands for social revolutions ; and deliver 
 themselves of absurd propositions and wild, delirious dreams 
 of social reorganization, which, by their very greenness, are 
 wholly unachievable. 
 
 These male ladies are backed, flanked, and encouraged by an 
 equally wild and loony regiment of strong-minded sisters, of 
 vinegar aspect, blue-stocking dominance, and free-love pro- 
 clivities and tendency, and when they catch a fool — practice ; 
 each wing of which, all the year round, from public platforms, 
 shamelessly advocate the annihilation of marriage, and the sub- 
 stitution of do-as-you-please notions, — all of which are rotten, 
 hideous, and so utterly revolutionary, that were they to become 
 
202 WOMAN, LOVE) AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the world's creed for a single year, would land the race into a 
 chaotic state compared to which the barbarisms of the Goths 
 and Vandals, with Attila and Genseric at their head, flanked by 
 Vitellus and Nero of Rome, were the highest, noblest civiliza- 
 tion. The public authorities wink — and wickedly too — at 
 all these awful and blasphemous perversions of truth, and suffer 
 the maniacs to howl out their abominations undisturbed, to the 
 edification of other maniacs, and the delectation of sickly -minded 
 fools and inal-contents of either gender, and to the annual utter 
 ruin of countless thousands of the young, unread, inexperienced 
 greenies of both sexes, who are led by morbid curiosity — the 
 same which urges people to witness a lynching, cock-fight, exe- 
 cution, or boxing bout — to listen, and be lost. Both these 
 sections of long, lean, lank and lantern-jawed fanatics and mad 
 people are desperately intent upon disrupting social life from 
 its very foundations, and making outrageous and foolhardy 
 experiments in social polity, calculated, in their blind opinion, 
 to restore the golden age — if ever such existed — on principles 
 embracing the two extremes of fanaticisms, from the abomi- 
 nable and outrageous systems of Noyes, Andrews, Boyd, Brig- 
 ham Young, et als., to the ridiculous and absurd ones of the 
 celibate and dried-up Shakerism of the age, which, in an oppo- 
 site direction, is even more injurious in one or two of its effects 
 upon the individual and society at large, than the indecent 
 Pantogamy, or complex marriage, or modern changee for chan- 
 geeism. 
 
 All these people forget, or ignore, the fact that all things, 
 earthly and heavenly too, hang upon and hinge on the Me as 
 supreme centre of all ; that all human effort is toward the hap- 
 piness of this grand multiple Me ; and that no joy can come to 
 it save through the mutual play of the forces of the multiple 
 unit upon the single unit, and vice versa; that individualism, 
 while maintaining itself, must devote its energies to justly and 
 fairly promoting the interests of all the other units, not a part 
 or fraction ; hence that schemes of reform which antagonize the 
 interests of all other units save the few in accord with the par- 
 tialism must fail, because opposed by the grand law of human 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 203 
 
 unity and democracy of interests underlying the entire social 
 fabric. Hence any S)-stem looking to other than general re- 
 construction of the habits, morals, and so on, of the single Me's 
 of the universal Me, is worthless, and the breath spent in pro- 
 claiming them worse than wasted. The world can never be 
 rebuilt until it becomes inpossible for Mr. Boarland to swindle 
 Miss Green into wedlock under the impression that he's a man, 
 and that what he offers is love ; when in fact he's no such thing, 
 and his wares are counterfeit. 
 
 When the graves give up their dead and the murdered are all 
 duly classified, there will be a frightful host of Misses Green 
 clamoring for justice at the bar of God ; and not a few will 
 point their pale, thin, wasted fingers at the crouching philoso- 
 phers, exclaiming, " Thou didst it ! thy teachings ruined us. 
 Thy unholy schemes of social reform, based on selfishness and 
 fired by lust, laid waste our hearts, blighted our hopes, and 
 brought millions of us to untimely graves ! " 
 
 Think of a coarse-minded man being entrusted alone for life, 
 with a delicate, finestrung woman. A man so selfishly blinded 
 that he fails to comprehend the meaning of the phrases mar- 
 riage-union, — oneness in allness ! — and that it requires, on the 
 part of any husband, anxious to promote domestic felicity, a great 
 deal of genuine care, effort, and tenderness, on his part, to evoke 
 physiological reciprocity of feeling in a wife of almost any class 
 of the middle and higher orders of our day ; for many of their 
 natures are too delicate, lofty and refined, and their metaphysi- 
 cal value too great, to permit a very ready or quick descent 
 into the more contracted domain of the purely sensuous. And 
 yet these are the very beings, of all others, who become inex- 
 pressibly dear on those planes, when they are by love lured from 
 their heights ; for there are mysteries of joy in their sacred keep- 
 ing unknown to coarser mortals, and climaxes and acmes, 
 heights, depths and intensities of domestic happifiedness are 
 reached, which -.are forever unattainable under any other con- 
 ditions ! 
 
 Such wives — ay, nearly all wives — are, or can be, easily 
 moulded into, and of, the heavens heavenly ; but never by any 
 
204 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 member of the extensive Boarland family, until such effect 
 radical changes in their habitudes and characters ; for other- 
 wise the inner, higher, profounder mysteries of woman and her 
 heart and senses remain sealed books forever ! 
 
 Such lords insist upon remaining as created to their ladies, 
 the consequence of which is that churclryards and cemeteries 
 abound with the bodies of the latter ; and rum-holes with those 
 of the former ; while the emancipated souls of the wives wing 
 back their flight through the JEth, to the constellar Paradises 
 of Restful Space, where, thank God ! the Boarland family is 
 wholly unknown. As for the soul of the head of such a house, 
 
 — he has one, but put it in the eye of a cambric needle, and it 
 would have more room to exercise in than would a grasshopper 
 in a forty-acre lot, — what little there is of it, incites him to 
 come the killing smile again, don gay attire, and assume his 
 most fascinating airs, wherewith to delude some other fay into 
 what he calls marriage ; and in a year or two more half regret- 
 fully pays another doctor's and undertaker's bill for services 
 rendered in her behalf. 
 
 The question is : Why is this so ? Is it not a natural law 
 that the weaker should lean upon, and draw strength and vital- 
 ity from, the confessedly stronger? The reply is: Sometimes 
 
 — where true Love reigns ; not always even then, and never 
 under the most common state of things in modern marriage- 
 land. For it so happens that a person who is both strong and 
 coarse in texture invariably draws out, — insensibly absorbs 
 from, and lives, to a great extent, upon the finer nervo-vital 
 fluids — the auraform vif or life — the nervous quintessence of 
 one constructed of less gross and coarse materials, and whose 
 organization, physical and mental, is of a more sensitive and 
 delicate grade. Where two such badly adapted opposites live 
 together — for it is hardly possible that a couple like that can 
 ever love together, or that the higher laws of marriage can rule 
 and reign, — the finer one, which is generally, but not always, 
 the woman, is sure, sooner or later, to go to the wall. Such an one 
 may linger a comparatively long time, but the bitter end must 
 come at last, and the frail one perish from the earth, unless the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 205 
 
 weaker one is wise enough to comprehend the situation, and 
 takes measures to cut off the drain, and nullify the fatal leech- 
 ment. 
 
 All of us, to a greater extent than we wot of, are dependent 
 upon electric and magnetic conditions. Who is there not famil- 
 iar with the exhilarating effects and the depressive influences 
 of different winds, — East, South, and North especially, — and 
 equally effected also by the physical and mental atmospheres 
 of certain individuals ? One person will excite another in every 
 way, while that other is, toward a third one, cold as Nova 
 Zembla's ice. Well, this is the result of organization ; but both 
 classes of effects are preventible by the steady will. 
 
 The coarse always tends toward the fine, and the fine to per- 
 vade the coarse. The coarse person wants naturally to be 
 finer ; the fine does not want to be coarse ; hence gives its life to 
 the coarse, but gets back nothing save exhaustion in return ; 
 while the coarse drinks up and consumes the fine, therefore 
 increases in power at the expense of the delicate graded being. 
 Such mismatches are common the wide world over ; and the 
 organizations of each class are determined by conditions pre- 
 cedent to birth ; for three-tenths of mankind are the results of 
 make-ups after family tempests; three other tenths are the off- 
 spring of mutual or one-sided physical passion ; three-tenths 
 from mixed conditions ; and one-tenth only are the result of 
 mutually genuine love ! but then that tenth rules the world of 
 mind, morals, religion, letters, art, and is the sole fountain of 
 all human culture ; because it contains and embraces all the 
 absolutely human beiugs, strictly speaking., on the planet ; for 
 no one is veritably human unless he or she is a gentleman or 
 lady in grain and in very truth, — and such, mind you, — are 
 very scarce ! such persons are born civilized in the true sense, 
 and are masters and mistresses of every situation of life, from 
 the cradle to the grave, and especially those involving love and 
 the master passions of the human being. 
 
 Owing to conditions over which we have no control, some of 
 us are born with a chronic lust in our very bones ; and, if we 
 
206 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 fall by leason thereof, having done our best to stand firm, we 
 "will find pity in God's heart if not in that of fellow-man. 
 
 Others of us are born with an overplus of genuine love, and 
 the chances are that we are natural polygamists and polyan- 
 drists, desperately in love with all the world, and the rest of 
 man or woman kind. That's a fault on the right side if we 
 don't carry it too far and — that's all. For our danger lies in 
 the fact that everybody spontaneously falls in love with tjs in 
 such cases, and for our lives we can't help returning it to some 
 degree at least. 
 
 Still others of us come to the world perfectly neutral, loving 
 one about as well as another, like a horse who goes in for oats, 
 whether first, second, or fiftieth grade or quality ; he means 
 oats, that's all ! 
 
 Again, there are those who are born on mental ridges, and 
 who can't love any one not on the same elevation, or out of 
 their peculiar groove. 
 
 Then there are people, men especially, born without any love 
 at all, or any desire for it, nor can they form the slightest idea 
 what love really means ; men who are perfectly ignorant of all 
 things of soul, and who go about love-making as market-men 
 their business, not realizing that a woman requires politeness in 
 a lover, respect, complaisance, gallantry, tenderness, non-bold- 
 ness, yet non-timidity ; and, above all, straight up and down 
 manliness of character and demeanor. "Women, too, are faulty ; 
 for most of them, in these days, are altogether too self-con- 
 scious, and, by their actions, give a man to understand that 
 they place a far greater value on their charms of person than 
 upon their qualities of heart, soul, mind, and affection. 
 
 Woman is quick to observe effects even though unqualified to 
 recognize and measure causes ; and she quite readily detects 
 and admires the elements of a true manhood, and that wholly 
 outside of the prospect of availability so far as her individual 
 self is concerned ; and just as instinctively and readily, even 
 though silence seals her lips, does she despise a male weakling, 
 — childhood, disease, and charity aside, — a creature in the 
 faint semblance of, but who, in reality, is not half, not even a 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 207 
 
 good-sized piece of a Man ; an animal sui generis, but abound- 
 ing, especially in the large centres of so-called civilization ; a 
 thing of whose presence a real woman is scarcely aware till ap- 
 prised of the shadowy fact ! On the other hand that self-same 
 woman, and all like unto herself, inwardly adore the free- 
 hearted, generous, full-souled man of energ} r , with refinement, 
 the being of her heart's ideal, — a gentleman ! — the ripe man- 
 hood, capable of worthily winning, and manfully, regally, wear- 
 ing the love of a woman like herself! She doats in her soul, 
 on the being who, always tender, never rude, harsh, exacting, 
 grovelling, or inconsiderate ; who, in the hour of Love, is full 
 of gentle tenderness, nobility, self-restraint, empurpled and 
 ermined royal manhood ; one who, in the day of trial and 
 trouble, will be found wearable, steadfast, unflinching, resolute 
 and courageous to bear the brunt of life's battle and win it, if 
 possible, against all odda, — and who, if beaten, falls with his 
 face to the foe, and if he dies, dies game. Such a man is worth 
 more to the world than forty quintillions of the social lobsters 
 of the age in which we exist ; for but very few of us really live, 
 but only stay, and, for want of homes, are forced to " board," 
 and take an overplus of hash, compounded of human fish, flesh, 
 fowl , and bad red herring, in lieu of the solids we've a right to. 
 
 " My Rosa, from the latticed grove, 
 
 Brought me a sweet bouquet of posies, 
 And asked, as round my neck she clung, 
 
 If tulips I preferred to roses. 
 1 1 cannot tell, sweet wife,' I sighed, 
 
 ' But kiss me ere I see the posies.' 
 She did. ' Oh, I prefer,' I cried, 
 
 ' Thy two lips to a dozen roses.' " 
 
 " I heard a judge his tipstaff call, 
 And say, ' Sir, I desire 
 You go forthwith and search the hall, 
 And send me in my crier.' 
 
208 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 " 'And search, my lord, in vain I may,' 
 The tipstaff gravely said ; 
 ' The crier cannot cry to-day, 
 Because his wife is dead.'" 
 
 And there's more of the latter than the former to be found in 
 the world ; and, indeed, the first is but the general honeymoon- 
 ness of which the latter is the settling-downity. 
 
 Said one who had become sick of life because love had not ful- 
 filled its mission, and who therefore was a wretched ennuyee : — 
 
 " The longer life, the more offence ; 
 
 The more offence, the greater pain ; 
 The greater pain, the less defence ; 
 
 The less defence, the lesser gain — 
 The loss of gain long ill doth try, 
 Wherefore, come death, and let me die ! 
 
 *' The shorter life, less count I find ; 
 
 The less account, the sooner made ; 
 The count soon made, the merrier mind ; 
 
 The merrier mind doth thought invade — 
 Short life, in truth, this thing doth try, 
 Wherefore, come death, and let me die ! 
 
 *' Come, gentle death, the ebb of care ; 
 
 The ebb of care, the flood of life ; 
 The flood of life, the joyful fare ; 
 
 The joyful fare, the end of strife — 
 The end of strife, that thing wish I, 
 Wherefore, come death, and let me die ! " 
 
 Five hundred to one, ay, the Rocky Mountains to a bad po- 
 tato, that the mother of that man hated her husband with forty- 
 thousand horse-power ! She dressed in azure, was indigo inside 
 and out, and gave her son the chronic blues a year before he was 
 born, and nursed him on blue milk till he was weaned, then fed 
 him on moral mulligrubs till puberty, after which he made an 
 ass of himself without half trying ! else he never could have 
 written in such a lugubrious, church-yardical strain. Such a 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 209 
 
 man — and there's many a woman like him — would require 
 Sam Welter's forty million double magnifying microscope to be 
 able to see anything lovely, glorious or beautiful in this foot- 
 stool of the Eternal. Such a being is nine-tenths blind 
 both to the world's realities, and the myriad loves within the 
 reach of every earnest soul who will but try to win them. When 
 death does come to such, we miss them but little. 
 
 It cannot be too often repeated, impressed or cited, that un- 
 less a human life is builded on the divine passion, it is of very 
 little worth to its owner or anybody else. But we often make 
 mistakes and confound force with power, power with energy, 
 friendship with esteem, esteem with affection, magnetic effluence 
 with love, and passion for either. Now a few definitions will 
 help the reader to distinguish. Force is external. Power is the 
 silent, inner sense of might. Energy is the consciousness of 
 ability to be and do — a knowledge of the possession of the 
 elements of victory, a conviction of personal resources, and 
 ability to move them into action at will. Passion is the desire 
 of mingling, and exists wholly independent of love, affection, 
 friendship, or any other amiable quality — for men have passion 
 without love, women very seldom do. There is one very re- 
 markable fact in reference to women, which is, that love affects 
 her entire being for the better, while a man ma}' truly love, and 
 yet be a perfect villain for a long time, to every one on earth 
 but the object of his affection. In time, of course, love will 
 modify his character. 
 
 If a woman's affections are strongly engaged, all nature is a 
 play-ground for her soul, and under its inspiration she at once 
 improves in every way, and rapidly too ; while a man in love 
 moves toward the good, the true, and the right, but he moves a 
 great deal more slowly in that direction than a female, under 
 precisely similar circumstances. 
 
 Almost any man will grow better if made to feel that his wife 
 really loves and cares for him in other matters than mere board 
 and so forth. 
 
 And so, too, with almost any woman. But it is dreadful 
 poor encouragement for her to realize that she is a wife for fif- 
 14 
 
210 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 teen minutes, and a slave and drudge for all the balance of the 
 livelong week ! Rather poor feed, that, for love to thrive on ! 
 The man's a fool, and the woman not much better, who takes 
 delight in morbidly scrutinizing the imperfections of their part- 
 ner, instead of the exact opposite. If we could see what takes 
 place in the kitchen, we would not so highly relish the food set 
 before us ; but as we banish and ignore kitchen thoughts when 
 sitting at the feast, it were not a bad idea to copy when we sit 
 at the banquet of life and love ; for, depend upon it, the feast 
 itself is a wide departure from the feast's base or origin, in what- 
 ever light you choose to take it. It is sheer folly and madness 
 to pick what little happiness we have to pieces ; or to spend our 
 time in hunting for flaws in another's character when we've forty- 
 thousand in our own. 
 
 Those lugubrious whiners who imagine that God has forgot- 
 ten his purpose in creation, because licentiousness runs riot in 
 the world, are but short-cake philosophers, and are oblivious to 
 the fact of the ceaseless operation of corrective agencies right 
 in the midst of every hell existent ; and that every infraction 
 and perversion of a love-law carries its death along with it ; 
 for God and Nature have decreed that the true shall live and 
 the false shall perish. Wherefore we see that no solace of even 
 passion, other than in the arms of love, never did, and never can 
 satisfy a truly human longing ; for everything else is a fearful 
 profanation of the holiest sanctity, and is a crime against 
 nature and God Himself, who instituted the passions for the 
 wisest of ends, and who punishes terribly, sooner or later, every 
 infraction or perversion of the sacred thing, — and there are 
 quite as many of them within, as without, wedlock, — quite as 
 many diabolic outrages against justice, right, human nature 
 and woman nature, within the pale of marriage as anywhere 
 outside of it. 
 
 It may be true that all rejections are well-founded or war- 
 rantable ; but where they are — and there is but one sole judge 
 and umpire, with God and nature for referees — then whoever 
 persists in an odious pursuit is a — wretch ! 
 
 He is not much of a man who cannot wait till he is wanted 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 211 
 
 and sent for, and then go at the first call, — to any truly human 
 duty, whatever be its nature ; whether it fall within the lines of 
 labor, effort, charity, mercy, justice, affection, friendship or — 
 Love! 
 
 It is said, and truly, too, " That a certain degree of solitude 
 seems necessary to the full growth and development of the 
 highest mind ; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse 
 with men stifle many a holy germ and scare away the gods, who 
 shun the restless tumult of noisy companions and the discus- 
 sion of petty interests." 
 
 If this be so of genius, how much more is it of woman, whose 
 mental states create conditions of mind, and establish genius 
 on its throne in the world ? Now there are moments in every 
 woman's life wherein she is too holy to be spoken to, much less 
 handled or jarred. When she is so jarred, the waves roll out 
 and the world is sure to hear and feel them ; even if it waits a 
 hundred years for it — come it will. Many a war has been 
 waged which took its rise fifty years before in the mind of some 
 woman, who, being disturbed, felt fight, bred fight, gave fight 
 to the world in the shape of a man — the incarnation of Fight, 
 and who could never be happy except when fight ruled his life- 
 Such things, if attended to, will not fail to work out better 
 results for the world than the world dreams of yet ; for the 
 earth cannot be peopled with either devils or angels except by 
 woman's aid. She is the head-centre above all. And all that 
 is needed is perfect reciprocity, in affectional as in other mat- 
 ters between husbands and wives. Then will the well of life 
 yield its sweetest waters, to slake the immortal thirst within us. 
 The impetuous precipitance so common in affectional mat- 
 ters in these days is hardly the thing suited to the delicate 
 nature of any woman, much less a refined one. People in these 
 days can scarcely understand what is meant by the words, the 
 sweet demise of Love. 
 
 A word now to women ! The mode or method of surrender- 
 ing is a spell by which the good graces and enduring tenderness 
 of a genuine husband are secured ! and even a false one, — and 
 
212 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 heaven knows their multitude bids defiance to arithmetic, — 
 really surpassing that of imitation wives, — may be recon- 
 structed into something akin to what the word really means. 
 Nor let it be forgotten that the very ardor of true love acquires 
 new strength in the plenitude of a genuine, but not abused, 
 voluptuousness. 
 
 When married people continue lovers, there is no end to their 
 joy ; and over the lintels of their doors may in very truth be 
 posted the celebrated inscription found over the entrance of a 
 maison de joie in ruined Pompeii, " Hie Habet Felicitas ! " 
 (Here happiness dwells !) But then, right opposite the door of 
 that ancient bawdy-house was the entrance to the temple of the 
 Vestal Virgins. The street was narrow and paved with heavy 
 blocks of lava, — something quite as hard as glass, — and over 
 that pavement went alike, those who did homage at Virtue and 
 Chastity's shrine, and those who worshipped at one the direct 
 opposite. The pavement reaching to the Vestal shrine was 
 scarcely worn; while that just over the way was worn out! 
 showing that human nature then — over two thousand years ago 
 — was pretty much the same crooked stick we find it to-day, 
 especially as regards the young of the male sex, ay, and the 
 female too, for that matter. But then there are twenty male 
 debauchees to one female, the wide world over ; hence, in that 
 respect, there is at least twenty times more virtue among women 
 than men ! Now the ladies reading that will be apt to clap 
 their hands and crow over this statement with " There ! I told 
 you so. I knew it all along ! " Stop a moment. One male 
 libertine, if successful, may carry his point in a life-time with, 
 say forty virtuous women. But one female libertine will in- 
 veigle and ruin from threescore to five hundred decent men, 
 young and old, in a career of twenty years, if she be magnetic 
 and beautiful, along with her abandone and artfulness ; and so 
 far as the numerical ruin is concerned the women surpass the 
 men, case for case. True it is that the victims of the men 
 often go crazy and kill themselves ; but, per contra, the female 
 libertine spreads desolation far and wide and on all hands, for 
 she not only contaminates the minds of young men, but breaks 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 213 
 
 up families, and scatters despair at the firesides of millions, in 
 a moral point of view ; nor does her infernal mission stop even 
 at that point ; for she spreads an awful plague of sickness over 
 the land, and poisons not only erring husbands, but their inno- 
 cent wives, and sends down the damnation of disease to future 
 generations in the flesh and bone of millions of innocent unborn 
 babes ! For rank devilment commend us to one bad woman ! 
 for she can give odds, yet hold her own, and win the hell-prize 
 against any ten men ever yet born of woman ; for of all con- 
 ceivable demons, a she-one is immeasurably the worst, because 
 her capacity for evil, for murder and villany, is tenfold that of 
 any man that breathes God's fresh ah", or treads the soil of this 
 green earth ! 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Concerning genuine Man or Womanhood, nothing is more 
 certain than that they find their truest, best and loftiest devel- 
 opment through antagonism. Says some one : — 
 
 " A certain amount of opposition is of great help to a man. 
 Kites rise against the wind, and not with the wind ; even a bad 
 wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage 
 anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, be- 
 cause of opposition ; opposition is what he wants, and must have 
 to be good for anything. Hardship is the native soil of man- 
 hood and self-reliance." 
 
 Just so it is in affairs of the heart. A love without storms, 
 one with clear skies and flowery paths all the time, does not 
 amount to much ! An affection that has never been put to the 
 test needs that testing to consolidate its bones, and make its 
 tendons strong and lasting. True love and heartache go to- 
 gether ; and a love in which physical passion enters as a prime 
 element — and any sensible woman can tell that by the huski- 
 ness of voice and cotton-spitting of her " lover," any night when 
 they are walking out together ! — is a base counterfeit, and its 
 
214 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 professor should be shown the door the carpenter made, in 
 double-quick time ; for although ardent attraction must accom- 
 pany love between couples, yet ever as a subsidiary element ; 
 never as a prime one ! 
 
 If a man really loves a woman, there is no degree of self- 
 restraint but he will endure for her sweet sake. We read that 
 Adam was successfully tempted to eat the forbidden fruit long 
 after he had conquered his own appetite for apples, and suc- 
 cessfully resisted the blandishments and high priori inducements 
 of Mr. Devil — the no-legged vagabond, who wormed himself 
 into Eve's confidence, and influenced her to ruin the man she 
 loved, — just as forty millions of Eves are doing to-day — quite 
 as successfully, only that the Devil has grown wiser of late, and 
 calls himself" Fashion ; " " Society ; " " Dress," etc., etc., — the 
 old wretch ! 
 
 People — on Sundaj^s — berate the devil, and rave at Adam 
 because he ate, and was snaked out of Eden in consequence ; 
 but then Adam did perfectly right, if he loved his bride ! for 
 any man who wouldn't bite an apple — or a file either — at the 
 behest of the handsomest woman ever completed, and that 
 woman his wife, and right in the fore part of the honeymoon at 
 that, is a fool ! — which Adam was not. 
 
 Says Seyton May : — 
 
 When Eve, beguiled, did taste the fruit 
 
 That wrecked her, what did Adam do? 
 Awhile he stood, in horror mute, 
 Then — tasted too I 
 
 " ' I love thee ! ' so he spoke at last, 
 ' And what thy future fate may be, 
 I know not, care not — for the past, 
 I go with thee ! ' 
 
 " Man's love ! Was ever love like this? 
 Still Paradise remained his own, 
 But all, he turned from all its bliss, 
 For her alone ! 
 
WOMAX, LOVE, AND MAURI AGE. 215 
 
 " And angels bent, amazed to know, 
 
 While broken thus the Sovereign plan, 
 How Love, their crown, is, even in woe, 
 The crown of Man ! " 
 
 But by eating that unfortunate fruit the whole human race 
 fell, did it not? Yes, — fell r^-hill ! and has been falling that 
 self-same way ever since, supposing the legend to be literally 
 true, which, considering the vestiges of Pre-Adamite man now 
 found all over the globe, not every well-read person is willing 
 to maintain, looked at in the light of modern science. If he 
 fell he fell by love, and love put him on his feet again — and 
 set him up in business besides. 
 
 Suppose we accept the story, and reason it out a little. It 
 can be shown — in the light of science, of course — quite 
 clearly, that the forbidden apple did more for Adam and the 
 race, than that other, equally mythical one did for Newton and 
 science. And here is the logic of it, — high priori, of course, 
 albeit for Adam was all a posteriori — with a vengeance. If 
 the idea of " progress " is true, then the protoplast or autoch- 
 thone, was a barbarian ; lived in a garden ; shelterless, save 
 by trees ; nude, etc. ; grew curious, inquisitive ; went for that 
 apple ; rather liked it ; had a family as the result of curiosity ; 
 had to go to work to support it ; left Eden — the garden be- 
 hind, to travel toward Paradise, the garden ahead ! The 
 Adamses turned tillers of the soil — albeit they're in the express 
 business now ! Thus one grand science — Agriculture — had 
 its birth, and the field was open for Horace Greeley to tell the 
 world " What I know about Farming." The eyes of the Adam 
 Family — who were not A-dam family, even if circumstances 
 did go against them apparently — were opened ; Shame was 
 born, and Tailoring and Millinery begun. Being driven from 
 the garden, Adam had to prepare a shelter for his wife and fam- 
 ily, and did so by twisting treelet-tops together, forming a 
 bower, and developing the first ideas of the Arch — Archi- 
 tecture ; hut, house, hamlet, village, town, city, palace, civ- 
 ilization ; necessitating labor, art, science, invention, trade, 
 commerce, and means to carry on the latter, rafts, canoes, dug- 
 
216 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 outs, row-boats, sail-boats, sloops, schooners, brigs, barks, 
 ships, frigates, steamboats, Great Easterns, and of course 
 aesthetics, law, politics, morals, poetry, religion, philosophy ! 
 Great heaven ! what wonderful things did not come of eating 
 that apple — Eve's curiosity — the snake — the devil — and the 
 world as it is to-day ! What's the key to the mystery ? Why, 
 Love, to be sure — the mighty love that naked, hairy, uncouth, 
 barbarian Adam had for the slender, wilful, pettish, offish, 
 but dear and delightful creature who stood by his side, and 
 made him even forget his God for her ! just as three-fifths of 
 his sons have ever since and will, till time shall be no more ; 
 the only trouble about the matter being to have all the Eves 
 right, and then the Adams are sure to be so likewise. 
 
 When Love was born, — when Cupid and Psyche fused and 
 blended, — hell began to tremble, the wilderness to blossom, 
 heaven to expand its area, souls to grow and the good time get 
 ready to come — right straight along ! 
 
 We are told by " philosophers " that man and all other created 
 things are on a common footing ; that no law but choice and 
 chance ought to govern the relations of the sexes from man down- 
 ward ; that man is realty at liberty to do as he pleases — so long 
 as he don't get caught at it — or run his train against a brick wall. 
 Such stuff they teach ; but you just let one of the same creed 
 play that game with Mr. Philosopher's wife and daughters, — 
 and will he smile ? You bet he won't ! But he will go whining, 
 raving about the land, button-holing everybody who will listen 
 to him with : — 
 
 " Oh, it is — an orrible t-a-l-e, 
 'Twill make your faces — all turn p-a-l-e " — 
 
 proving he is a lying scamp inside and out — now that he has 
 found out how the bad thing works himself ; no matter by what 
 sort of velvet and satiu names the vices he expounds as virtues 
 are called. He knows, we know, that his Pandora's box is full 
 to the brim of woe-seeds, every one of which is heavily fecund 
 of evil in an hundred shapes. May the day speedily come 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 217 
 
 when of such philosophers it may be said and sung, and chorus 
 It again : — 
 
 " Their bones are dust, their pens are rust, 
 Their ethics gone to pot — we trust." 
 
 When a wise man plays the fool, a woman is generally at the 
 bottom of it. 
 
 The greatest mistake ever made by any human being, man 
 or woman, is the one of supposing that any amount of mere 
 passional luxury, any amount of revelry in lust, can ever, ever 
 satisfy the heart and make a person content. All the wealth, 
 luxury, trappings, fame — revelry in lust, with millions to 
 back, and thousands to assist therein — will prove a mock-feast, 
 and never be satisfactory. One love, one mate, one grand 
 safety only can do this, and fill the true cup of human joy to 
 its full. 
 
 " I have loved — not wisely — but too muchly ! " is what many 
 a man, and not a few women, silently say to themselves. The 
 author hereof can feel with and for them, for he Tcnoivs how it is 
 himself! 
 
 There is an awful deal of hypocrisy afloat in the world, in 
 heart matters, as well as in politics and religion. Yet we 
 blindly, stupidly, wilfully, perpetuate the evil. While the 
 writer was in Jerusalem, Syria, in 1862, the various consuls 
 there caused the stones to be cleared from the road ending at 
 the Damascus gate. Useless task ! for at night the very Arabs 
 — the fellaheen — who were employed to cast away the stones by 
 day, took pains to cast them back by night. " The roads were 
 good enough for our fathers. They are good enough for us, 
 and therefore are too good for these Christian dogs ! " was the 
 logic — and back went the stones. Of a piece with that is the 
 miserable policy of the Won't-do-betters in the house of Mar- 
 riage. If forsooth they have lived a helter-skelter, home nor 
 shelter, storm and pelter sort of life up till to-day, why they 
 must keep it up, because — they are fools ! We want no more 
 stony roads to Damascus ; but we do want a thorough revolu- 
 
218 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 tionizing of connubial habitudes, a greater amount of open 
 honesty in all our dealings with the species, whereupon the 
 loves current in the world will bear our life-barks on to the 
 shining city of Felicity, now beheld so very far off, yet glitter- 
 ing so brightly in the sunshine of Hope. 
 
 The age of manhood is not yet, but is nestling somewhere in 
 the fruitful womb of coming time ! 
 
 How very often we reach erroneous conclusions concerning 
 the skeletons in every body's closet, — our own included, — and 
 how we rack our brains, wondering who's to blame. We de- 
 cide one way or another, against him or her, and, ten to one, 
 decide wrongly. We affirm that he or she placed the skeleton 
 there, but how do we know which did, if either? May it not*be 
 that that identical death's head and cross bones is an heir-loom, 
 handed down, regularly, having been securely packed away 
 somewhere in his or her bones, brains, soul, — no — not soul, — 
 for soul is ahvays good and pure ! — but in nerves and general 
 make-up? How do we know, but that the unpacking of said 
 skeleton may be the result of other's influence, — seeming 
 accident ? Anyhow there it is ! and there it ghastly grins des- 
 olation to you or me, him or her. How, in God's name, shall 
 either of us get rid of the accursed presence ? is the question. 
 Neither of us all seem to have courage enough to take the 
 accursed thing by neck and heels, and tumble it headlong out 
 upon the waste, and know it no more forever ! "We won't do 
 it, more's the pity ! 
 
 Some children rather like to have splinters in their flesh, for 
 the "fun" of picking them out: and so, too, some married 
 people appear to take delight in cultivating some dear, deli- 
 cious grievance, just for the sake of having a delightsome agony 
 to suffer from and growl over. But in the end Wolf, wolf! 
 turns out not to be a false alarm ! 
 
 Examples ! Bah ! their odor is — pestiferous ! How very 
 often we are stunned with an overplus of eulogistic flummery, 
 anent some great public functionary ; a bedizened count this, 
 lord that, Baron Kacky-Acky, popular preacher, author, or 
 6ome flnnkyistic jigadier brindle, home from the wars, whose 
 

 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 219 
 
 every act is clamorously cited as just the thing for every one 
 else to copy after and follow ; just as if any one but a natural-born 
 fool would, or ought to, be content with the sort of respect re- 
 sultant from successful copyism. No fame, esteem, or anything 
 else is worth having, unless struck out with original fire, from 
 the flint and steel within us, tapped right straight from the 
 wells of power, deep down below the hard-pan of our own 
 souls ! 
 
 These public people whose examples we are taught to cher- 
 ish, who and what are they, behind the scenes, half the 
 time ? What do we know of their hidden life — even of a man 
 like Washington ? or anybody else, for that matter ? — for it is 
 quite as likely that these men whom circumstances bring to the 
 surface have quite as many dark spots hidden, as have any of 
 the less fortunate small potatoes at the bottom of the social 
 basket. One, ay, all, of these so-called exemplars, — for there 
 are but few real ones, at the head of whom stands Him of 
 Nazareth, flanked on either side by the Man of the Bo-tkee, 
 and Him who sleeps in Philae ; these aside, and what do most 
 of the rest amount to ? Take one as a sample : to those he 
 meets in the great busy world, he is all smiles, urbanity, good 
 feeling, and the world rates him as a man of the " A number 
 one " class, and heralds his name as being great, both far and 
 wide ; and yet, nine times in ten, the real and true story of that 
 man's actual worth is not told ; because generally it is not 
 known ; for, say what you will, the true sphere of the man, and 
 the sphere of the true man, lies not only as much within doors 
 as without, but a great deal more ; because all disguises are 
 dropped at the threshold of his home as he enters, and the 
 cloak of policy is put on the instant he recrosses it again. 
 Hence it happens that many a popular idol is an infernal 
 scoundrel and tyrant at his own fireside ; and that his great- 
 ness dare not be spoken toby wife, child, or dependent, save with 
 bated breath, and hearts trembling all the while. He is all 
 honey to outsiders, and gall and wormwood in his own house. 
 He may be a splendid Democrat or Republican out in the 
 street ; and overbearing, autocratic littleness in his own domi- 
 
220 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 cile ! In society his lips may drop nothing but sugared phrase 
 and honeyed words, and he be the pet of the ladies ; while in his 
 own private dwelling, guilty of prolonged and attenuated murder, 
 his weak, sickly, exhausted wife the victim, lingering, broken 
 hearted, long-dying victim to his greatness' unholy passions. 
 Not even ministers of Christ's blessed Gospel are free from 
 either the crime against wifehood, or the double-faced, hypo- 
 critical meanness following it. He lacks, but apes the essen- 
 tials of true manhood, to others ; laws take no heed of certain 
 sorts of murder, of which wives are the victims, and a man may 
 kill half-a-dozen of them in succession, and still be counted 
 respectable. 
 
 While such a man has a calm and serene smile for all other 
 people, to her who is his legal prey he wears brute armor, 
 though never a loud word be spoken, and never a blow be 
 struck, and yet he wears it, to her untold, inexpressible cost. 
 In nothing but shape does such a one resemble the true man — 
 he who in the private domains of life exercises those spontane- 
 ous courtesies and kindnesses and self-restraints and tender- 
 nesses, so befitting the real gentleman, — for money and place 
 do not make the gentleman ; but manhood does, even without 
 a dollar to back it, — courtesies so highly appreciated, but so 
 very seldom enjoyed by — modern wives. Look at the sons of 
 preachers ! Do they appear to be the refined resultant of heavenly 
 marriage and mutual love ? or of something quite opposite in 
 character thereto? Watch the careers of preachers' sons, and 
 it will be found that they far oftener sink below mediocrity than 
 rise above it — except in social vice. Faugh ! such ministerial- 
 ness stinks in the nostrils of every honest man — or woman 
 either ! 
 
 Among all the really great men who have flourished in our 
 day, — and by great is meant, not merely famous, but who had 
 character and man-ness back of it, — there are a few marked 
 ones, whose careers seemed round and full. First of these was 
 Lincoln, who merited eternal salvation and beatitude — from the 
 fact of his — marriage I 
 
 Says the legend : Rap, rap, went a pair of knuckles at the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRj.AGB. 221 
 
 gate of Heaven. Who's there ? asked St. Peter of the keys. 
 It's meself, plaze yer riverance — one Paudeen O'Raflerty, from 
 the village of Clogher in the county Tyrone. What have yez 
 done that }-e should entlier into gloory? says St. Pether. Divil 
 a wan o' me knows — widout it's I've been married? Oh, 
 beggorra, says St. Pether, yez have said enough ! barrin did 
 yez have a mother-in-law ? Faith, an' I did have that same, bad 
 luck to her sowl ! d'ye mind that? Be the hill o' Howth, but she 
 icas a tarer ! Howly mother o' Moses, d'yez twig the back o' 
 me head? Sure divil a bit o' hair's been on it these twinty 
 years, by raizin o' the throuble ! I say, says St. Pether, sthrike 
 up the music there, here's a new marthyr come to gloory ! And 
 Paudeen passed through in a blaze of triumph. Seeing which, 
 a long-haired, long-eared "Reformer" went up and rapped. 
 What do you want? To come in. Can't see it ! said St. Peter. 
 Why, I've been married too ! Indeed ! Yes ; you bet I have — 
 muchly I How's that ? Wh}*, you see I got a divorce, because 
 I found what I thought was nry eternal affinity — another man's 
 wife — as the first one was! and — You're twitting on facts! 
 said St. Peter, rather angrily ; and that aint fair, you know. 
 Well, go on. So when I got number two, O Lordy ! It was out 
 of the frying-pan into the hottest fire you ever saw ! My 
 second was a strong-minded woman ; and one clay she went 
 into a trance, — over the left, — and lectured the top of her 
 head clean off; and I suppose she's somewhere hereabouts, you 
 know ; but you needn't trouble yourself looking her up, you 
 know ; for I don't want to find her — or either of my mothers- 
 in-law — }'ou bet! All I want is to get in and kinder mix in pro- 
 miscuously among the Reformers, you know. The which? said 
 St. Peter. Why, bless your slab-sided Yankee soul, my dear 
 greeney, there isn't a single one here ! None ? Why, you 
 astonish me ! There's no hell, you know, and millions of them 
 are dead, so they must be here ! You're mistaken. There was 
 a lot a long time ago, but they slandered each other so that the 
 rest of the saints got tired of it, and then they placarded the 
 walls of heaven, announcing a series of reform and woman's 
 rights conventions to be held outside, admission free, and no 
 
222 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 collection taken. And they all went except four thousand 
 affinity-hunters, and next clay they, too, went outside, and you 
 know it is a law that whoever goes out, stays out ; and so the four 
 thousand and the other host have joined your last wife — which 
 you'll have to do also, and go — Where ? Why — 
 
 " Up in a bal-\oon, sir, up in a bal-loon ! 
 All among the ' ists ' and ' ites ' on the dark side of the moon." 
 
 Lincoln, the martyr, in the sense alluded to, being in that 
 view the first great man of the age, because he stood it without 
 wincing, stands alone. Next to him, in spite of his fall, stands 
 Napoleon III., a man who lost a throne and empire by reason 
 of a woman's whim ; for if Eugenie had let the priests go to — - 
 Jerusalem, instead of bowing clown to them, and driving the 
 poor sick emperor half-crazy, he never would have accepted the 
 Prussian slate, and been wiped out with a German sponge. It 
 has already been said herein that never yet was there a really 
 great man but he was soft on the female world ; nor a genius 
 so grand but that a woman could wind him round her little 
 finger without half-trying ; hence we need not wonder that the 
 American Hercules — a man embodying more solid energy, 
 enterprise, and daring push than either of those mentioned, or 
 both combined, — a man, who in spite of his detractors, is really 
 greater than them all, even with his acknowledged weak points, 
 — a man who shines by his own light like a sun amid the minor 
 planets ; the personified, individualized United States of America, 
 consolidated and crystallized into something over two hundred 
 and fifty pounds avoirdupois of solid flesh, bone, muscle, nerve 
 and brain ; yet even he — this giant, this man of vast abilities, 
 and all his strength — has fallen before the power of, and been 
 made to bite the dust as it were, by the enemy — woman ! — 
 but in all cases he has been beaten with his own weapons, for 
 of all men living, during the last third of this century, the one 
 who had most love, hence most of womanly intuition and 
 financial prescience, James Fisk, Jr., had the greatest share. 
 
 It has been customary with a great many people, editors in- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 223 
 
 eluded, to affect contempt for, and to strenuously under-rate 
 the celebrated subject of this sketch, just as if he could have 
 filled the large frame in the world, which he unquestionably 
 does, had he not possessed absolute genius of a very remarkable 
 order. It is said he is vain. "Well, what of it? And well he 
 might be when contrasting himself with the fractional men 
 around him. James Fisk never yet abused a woman ; and the 
 writer of this personally knows at least twelve very prominent 
 public men, arfd editors too, all of whom denounce the Erie 
 King in unmeasured terms, who amuse their leisure by direct 
 wife abuse, and, what is worse, wife imprisonment and wife 
 starvation. Let the galled jades wince, Fisk's withers are un 
 wrung ! 
 
 This book will be read by many in distant lands who are not 
 familiar with current history on the Atlantic seaboard ; for such 
 the following statement is made by way of explanation : — 
 
 This work is written in 1871, at which time flourished in our 
 land a man of most wonderful magnetic presence and power, 
 combined with social and business qualities of a very high order, 
 — James Fisk, Jr. ; but what made him the undisputed king in 
 a very broad realm was the immense amount of stamina be- 
 queathed him by his parents, who must have loved each other 
 dearly, else such a being as the son alluded to never could have 
 been born ; nor could he have been endowed with the enor- 
 mous measures of love, both physically and otherwise, which 
 enabled him, in the time of the author hereof, to rise from semi- 
 menialism, a mere clerkship, and comparative obscurity, to the 
 front rank of financiers of the nation, and that, too, without the 
 slightest niggardliness, or mean littleism of any sort ; for during 
 his entire career, so far as it had been run when this was written, 
 many a one could have pointed to frequent love-adventures of 
 his, but never to a case of seduction of any pure, innocent girl 
 or woman, tyranny, or anything of the sort ; for the man's life 
 was constantly adorned with acts of princely generosity and 
 open-handed benevolence, neither of which were ever measured 
 by policy to the slightest extent ; all of which was owing to the 
 
224 WOMAN, LOVE* AND MARRIAUE. 
 
 magnificent fact above referred to, and one worthy of being 
 copied by every parent on the footstool. 
 
 During the last third of this century he filled a larger sphere 
 in America, outside of mere spasmodic politics, than any other 
 person, for he had more practical matter-of-factness, direct 
 energy, nerve, boldness, courage, bravery, skill, daring, self- 
 reliance, and executive ability, than any half-dozen of his con- 
 temporaries and detractors put together, — not literary skill, 
 albeit no mean poet, but a skilful one, and an excellent amateur 
 of music, besides full to the lips of straightforward, practical, 
 useful brain-power and individualism, — far-reaching mental 
 ability, the sort which makes its mark, and never knows defeat 
 — the kind of native force which never either ebbs or whines — 
 [for it was said of him, that nothing but love and music could 
 even for an instant throw him off his balance, — which when it 
 happened made fools laugh, because of their own non-heartness, 
 which rendered them incapable of appreciating a soul of the 
 undoubted calibre of Fisk's] — a native force of character 
 which was the touchstone of success ; an exhaustless fund of 
 resources, a fulness of that species of personalism which indel- 
 ibly stamps with its royal signature everything it touches, and 
 never fails to make its own clear mark, and which tells every 
 time. It may be said that other men have been even more 
 successful than Fisk, and amassed far greater sums of money. 
 Admitted ; but his value to the world did not spring from his 
 ability merely to pile up dollars ; for he has proved himself to 
 be, in some respects, the greatest civilizer that ever drew 
 breath on this soil. He made himself the benefactor of the mass- 
 es, — the steady and unchanging friend of labor and genius alike, 
 and the encourager of talent ! He was the munificent patron 
 of the drama, the opera, the ballet, of art, of letters, of practical 
 reform where reform was most needed. The whole life of the 
 man has, to this writing, been one single devotion to civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Who on the Atlantic seaboard has not gained immensely 
 from the grand upward flight which Music took, consequent 
 upon his splendid and successful efforts to popularize the divine 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 225 
 
 art through its most gifted interpreters, — Irma, Persini, Au- 
 jac, Lea Silly, Montaland, and hosts of others, who at the 
 waving of Fisk's omnipotent hand filled the land with melody, 
 and, by popularizing Offenbach, made millions whistle and sing 
 their cares away ! Who shall tell us what crime Fisk's play 
 called the Twelve Temptations, did not prevent ? Who shall 
 reveal the thousands of hearts he has made glad by his bounty, 
 his employment, his counsel and example? As for the writer 
 hereof, the happiest hours he ever knew were those he spent in 
 unalloyed enjoyment while listening to the divinely exhilarating 
 strains of Fisk's artists as they warbled Barbe Bleu; Le Pe- 
 tite Faust, Orphee auxEnfer, La Grande Duchess ; Perichole ! Ah, 
 Perichole! and, by the way, the writer of this knew of one man 
 wholly diverted from intended suicide, by the ridiculous fiasco 
 in the same line made by Pequillo in the Opera Bouffe just 
 named ; so there's one life to Fisk's credit, about which he never 
 knew a syllable. 
 
 Another friend of the author's, — a lady, — whom he took for 
 seven successive nights to listen to the same troupe in Boston, 
 subsequently told him that for three weeks she had carried a 
 vial of deadly poison with her, intending it for a bridge to the 
 " Summer land " as soon as her bottom dollar was gone : but 
 from which the music of Offenbach had saved her, thanks to the 
 Admiral of the Sound Fleet — in a double sense — ay, triple ! 
 
 While discussing this man, the author takes the liberty of 
 quoting from another work of his — in manuscript — called 
 " La Feronee , or, the Light behind the Night," a brief 
 section relating to this very man. The reader will understand 
 that his characters in the work, not himself, are talking. 
 Says one of these characters : — 
 
 " One day there was present in the societj^-rooms, or sanctum, 
 several literary people, and among them the rather extraordi- 
 nary young lady seeress or clairvoyant, known in this city as 
 La Feronee, whom the coterie had induced to give us a seance, 
 for the gratification of the curiosity of such of us who had 
 chronic doubts and scepticism concerning the alleged possibil- 
 ity of seeing without eyes, and reasoning with preternatural 
 
226 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 acuteness while in the so-called mesmeric state. At first the 
 general conversation turned upon Love, and ' Casca Llanna ' 
 (the author of this work) had expressed his belief that there 
 could be no great love without a corresponding great passion ; 
 and fortified it with numerous examples taken at random from 
 ancient mediaeval and current history ; when a learned pundit 
 declared that James Fisk was a great passionist and in some 
 sense a great man, too ; but by no means great in either the 
 amount, quality, or texture of his love, which, he affirmed, was 
 of a coarse grade ; to which opinion the ' Casca ' dissented, 
 and maintained that the man was not only full of love, but that 
 he had far more love than passion ; and was capable of grander 
 and finer expressions of it than nine men in ten on a general 
 average ; and that to the vast love in him was the world 
 indebted for oceans of music, pageants of operatic and dramatic 
 display, and refined methods of public travel, never equalled 
 since the world began ! — an argument of a very silencing 
 power in itself against the adverse, view. The conversation 
 waxed warm, until La Feronee became so deeply interested and 
 absorbed in it, that she very quietly dropped off into a perfectly 
 independent mesmeric sleep ; seeing which, the learned pundit 
 rubbed his hands with glee, and proposed to settle the question 
 — in his own favor, and against Fisk of course — by referring 
 the whole matter to the fair seeress while in her unearthly state of 
 mental exaltation ; to which some of us readily agreed ; albeit 
 others of the party complained ; for we had met to try a few 
 experiments of an entirely different character, but nevertheless 
 we all finally agreed to allow Fisk to be analyzed, en passant — 
 as it were." 
 
 Soon the slumbering lady opened her peerless lips, and 
 resumed her talk where she had left off at a prior seance. In 
 order to give the reader a clear preface to what followed, it is 
 necessary here to quote a portion of what she said ; and these 
 were her exact words — the general subject being the incarna- 
 tions and re-incarnations of the human soul, and the general 
 nature of the affections : — 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 227 
 
 " By repeated incarnations — for I have already proved that 
 the soul does not originate on earth, but pre-existed myriads of 
 ages before the worlds were made, and that it will exist myriads 
 of ages after the last material globe shall have ceased to be ! — 
 I repeat, after repeated incarnations, has the final life-point, 
 the primal intelligentia, the crystalline mystery, called Soul, 
 gone on and upward from the informing spark of a jelly-speck 
 in the mud of rivers, to the analid or worm, tadpole, fish-frog, 
 frog-fish, bird, quadruped, to the bimana in varied form and 
 phase, simia, cynocephalus, monkey, baboon, gibbon, ape, trog- 
 hxtyte, gorilla, nschiego, bushman, Hottentot, and so on, up 
 to, and through, the fifteenth amendment, and away beyond to 
 the highest, loftiest, noblest specimen of the creature called 
 Man ! — most of whom, I am sorry to say, are in only a half- 
 finished state yet, — rather underdone ! — and will be for a long 
 time to come, as a general thing ; for the ideal Manhood and 
 genuine civilization will be au fait accompli — together, but 
 both are an exceedingly long way off. In that day, — when 
 it arrives ! — justice — all that is required to inaugurate the 
 good time longed for — will have a meaning among men con- 
 sonant to and with its derivation, and will be the rule, instead 
 of the exception, as now ! " " What," asked the learned 
 pundit, "will be the state of things then, as you view the 
 future from your mesmeric stand-point?" She smiled, and re- 
 plied, " Marriage will be quite a different affair from what it is 
 at present. The true, and not the ordinary false and sham 
 sort will obtain ; and sensual bondage being unknown, unexpe- 
 rienced, plenty of the right sort of children will be born ! " " Not 
 of the James Fisk sort ! " exclaimed the pundit. She smiled 
 again, and said : " If this globe were peopled with a race of 
 humans, the worst of whom took rank beside the Erie King, this 
 would be — excuse me ! — a bully world to live in, and there 
 would be but little occasion for repressive laws, and small space 
 for human wrong ! 
 
 " In such a state of human affairs, as a natural consequence, 
 adulteries — the myriad legal, as well as the thousands of ille- 
 gal ones — shall have come to a sudden and eternal stop ; and 
 
228 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 as smart children be born within the pale of wedlock as most 
 notoriously come into the world outside thereof, in these mal- 
 generate daj's, because love will be real and not a sham. At 
 present the seventh capital sin, like most all others, is known 
 by its fruit ; as times go, generally quite the ablest-minded 
 and finest physical stamina in the world, — by reason of the 
 love and fire preceding the illegitimate's entree upon the 
 world's great stage ; and the sin itself is much more decried 
 than disused ! Is it not a little singular that talent, rare and 
 valuable, and genius, instant, bold and fiery, — angular cer- 
 tainly, yet talent and genius after all, — should spring so often 
 from disobedience of a social law, and such a vast amount of 
 mediocrity, not to say stupidity, should issue from within the 
 lines of marriage ? 
 
 " When millions of married couples shall produce and rear 
 such offspring as Mr. Fisk, take the word of La Feronee for it, 
 that our world will be the better for it ! Everything a man is, is 
 born in and with him ; springs from, and grows out of, the love 
 bequeathed him by regal father and queenly mother, which 
 love, in Fisk's case, teemed with beauty, united with brains, 
 vigor, health and utility, which in subsequent 3'ears took out- 
 ward form in gorgeous steam palaces, imperial opera houses, 
 and Divine Music inside of them, and in a thousand other 
 glories for mankind at large, proving him one of the most 
 effective preachers of good, truth, beauty, the world has ever 
 seen, or will see for many a long j^ear to come ! " " But," 
 said the pundit, " Fisk is an egotist ! " Said she, " "Was there ever 
 either a great or good man, or an effective one, who was not?" 
 Doubtful ! But when that egotism constantly displays itself in 
 efforts to gladden the world, as in his case, it is a virtue 
 second to none pertaining to intelligent beings ! Truth is 
 essentially dogmatic ; and individuality to be anything must be 
 prononce ; and the more pronounced it is, the greater the man, 
 hence, judged by that standard, the railway monarch ranks also 
 as king among men, and one, too, whose greatest happiness 
 consists in making others happy, directly and indirectly. For 
 instance, Fisk often gives pelites soupers to his singers and 
 
WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 229 
 
 artistes, who are rendered so happy thereby, that at their next 
 performance they play their roles with such spirit, verve and 
 elan, that the audiences are thrilled, and three thousand people 
 enjoy new and exquisite sensations, obliquely from the suppers, 
 but no less positively, all of which spring from the brain and 
 heart of this wonderful man. 
 
 " In the days wherein the worst man shall be as good as the 
 grand Speculator-general is now, husbands will have learned 
 that : If her life is not his life, she is not yet his wife ; and that 
 it is his immediate task to, in every way, make her so, even 
 though the verbal and ritual contract may have been made 
 twenty years before ! In that coming time, if a woman thinks 
 she marries a man, and finds herself tied to a beast instead, she 
 will find protection without being forced to run off, or disgrace 
 herself for purposes of escape from the thrall ! If she thinks 
 she marries mind, and finds it all matter, and coarse at that ! — 
 soul, and it turns out to be all muscle, and bone, and piggitudity, 
 — there will, in that civilized epoch, be means provided for her 
 speedy deliverance, not only b} T statute law, but by the univer- 
 sal recognition b}' society of the eternal laws of natural adapta- 
 bility, compatibility and civilized fitness, to be decided and 
 adjudged by persons of clear brain, and honest hearts adapted 
 to the regenerative work, before which final tribunal both 
 parties shall be patiently and fairly heard ; consequently the 
 necessity of bogus divorce concerns will cease to be, and the 
 premium on perjury forever fall ! And then, good-by, domestic 
 hells, and thrice welcome, new-made heavens ! " 
 
 Thus spake the charming slumberer, who then continued her 
 remarks, saj'ing : " By and by, people will distinguish between 
 force and power, and realize, as I do, in this sleep of Feronee, 
 that the former demonstrates, therefore wastes always ; while 
 the latter restrains and conserves, therefore preserves, the indi- 
 vidual and the qualities pertaining thereunto. In another 
 sense, men already know this, and are aware that there is more 
 real energy and genuine power in the single brain of an aver- 
 age civilizee than in an hundred average savages ; and that 
 there is a thousand times more power in one of these last than 
 
230 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 in fifty cumbrous whales, or floundering rhinoceri. We all 
 know, without stopping to reason about the matter at all, that 
 there is more life, vif, dynamic power and chemical richness in 
 the broiled flesh of one fat ox, than in ten tons of grass and 
 roots, if their relative fight and think-producing energy is 
 considered ; and just so is there more real and abiding power in 
 one good, though slender man or woman, in whom love has the 
 dominance, than in forty great giants, whose boast is merely 
 bullness, by which is meant physical beastitude only ! " 
 
 Question : " Will La Feronee now please, if it be not asking 
 too much, tell us something about real womanhood, — its con- 
 ditions, essentials, elements, and — " " Yes," said she, " I 
 understand your question. Womanhood's fulness depends up- 
 on, and consists in, first, physical health, the total absence 
 of unhealthy secretions, a perfect balance between brain, body, 
 and inner soul, with a fair degree of excitableness, impression- 
 ability and passional strength, emotive force, and self-command, 
 with due mental equipoise, all dependent to a great extent upon 
 fresh air, the bath, exercise of mind and body, and regular 
 habits of reading, thinking, talking, upon subjects aside from 
 the eternal humdrum gossip and empty nothings which now 
 usually engage their attention when awake, and of which they 
 dream when asleep. Not one woman in a thousand realizes 
 what she has a right to and ought to, in order to actually know 
 for what purpose different organizations were given mankind. 
 Women are unnatural, and can never be right till they live 
 right," 
 
 At this point the learned pundit became impatient, and was 
 about to express himself to that effect when the beauty there 
 sleeping said, addressing that individual, " I see that you are 
 aching to know about certain men, whether they are truly im- 
 mortal or not, and whether after death they will ascend among 
 the solar gods, or entering lower realms gradually waste away 
 and finally become wholly extinct, as some do ; or whether they 
 go to the middle spaces, dwindle back to the monadal state, 
 and finally go out upon the ether as unconscious points or atoms 
 

 WOMAN ^ LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 231 
 
 preparatory to being rebreathed, replanted, reincarnated, and 
 finally reborn on this or some other globe in space ! 
 
 " I perceive that you have in your mind a desire that, leaping 
 over the arguments or referring to the substance of what I have 
 heretofore said on the subject in this series of Feronee Seances, 
 I shall come at once to the point and illustrate my truths with 
 selections from the characters at this time most prominent iu 
 American society or before the great public. You wish to know 
 of their immortality, their actual soul calibre and mental weight ; 
 and above all you desire to know of their love-power, hence 
 their actual personal importance and value in the world — for 
 a great many men in this world are altogether over-rated and 
 overweighed, and pass current for a great deal more than their 
 just value ; while a great many others pass current for im- 
 measurably less than they are really and truly worth, because 
 all these men have the dominant of love very strongly, hence 
 are real, and not sham powers in the world. 
 
 " You silently ask me, "What is the weight and value of Train, 
 Tweed, Brownlow, Sumner, A. T. Stewart, Vanderbilt, Grant, 
 Forney, Butler, Fisk and others? With pleasure I reply : It 
 is always best to begin at the head, — with the fullest fnan of 
 all these just mentioned ; indeed there are but two in the list 
 who take very high rank, and these are the Lowell statesman 
 and the opera king. Tweed is peculiar, and requires a special 
 analysis, Brownlow is out of the combat, and so are Stewart, 
 Grant, and Train, for reasons not necessary to be now specified, 
 while as for Sumner he is, judging by his bust — a great senator, 
 but a very small man; his egotism is so immense that he has 
 no time to think of any one but himself, hence has no love ; nor 
 is he capable of inspiring it ; wherefore as a husband he is a 
 dead failure ; therefore also as a man ; for although as a 
 debater he has acquired some renown, and in some respects has 
 won ephemeral notice, yet his very best attempts have proved 
 abortive of lasting products, and although no crying evils can 
 justly be laid to his charge, yet, on the whole, great as some 
 may deem him, and as he undoubtedly imagines himself to be, 
 he has proved very unsatisfactory ; and when he dies and has 
 
232 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 a fine funeral, with a couple of hundred lamentable editorials, 
 and a score or two of eulogies, that will be the last of Charles 
 Sumner, and thus will he pay the dreadful penalty of being a 
 non-loving, non-affectionate, half-man. 
 
 To rise from the foot of the subject to the head, you need 
 not marvel when I affirm that — religion aside — all things, 
 accident, destiny, fate, nature and grace included, conspired, 
 with universal accord, to the great glorification of immoi'tal 
 James Fisk ! — the grandest epitome of universal Yankeedom 
 and American institutions that ever yet drew the breath of 
 life, or that now has an existence upon the planet on which we 
 live ! The reasons for that opinion have already been outlined, 
 if not fully given. The man stands solitary and alone, unique, 
 sui generis, and without a rival on the globe ! " 
 
 At this declaration all but the writer stared at her in utter 
 astonishment. He said, " That's been my opinion a long time, 
 albeit I never saw the man save once in my life, — when on the 
 17th of June, 1871, he rode at the head of his soldiers past my 
 window, at 89 Court St., Boston ! " As for the learned 
 pundit, to portray his varied emotions is an impossibility. Said 
 he, "Why does Fisk outrank Grant? Does he overtop stu- 
 pendous Ben Butler in that respect?" She answered, " Most un- 
 questionably ; for living he has no equal, and dying I can imagine " 
 — " What?" — " Why that but very few men will be missed as 
 will he." More was said in a jocular vein, in the two first editions 
 of this work, both of which were issued between December 28th, 
 1871, and January 7th, 1872 — on which day poor Fisk was 
 struck down in his prime by the assassin's hand. But no sooner 
 had the great man fallen, than the American people, and the 
 American press, nearly all of whom had underrated the Brattle- 
 boro giant, suddenly changed their tune with regard to him, and 
 to a man accepted the just estimate of the geni made in these 
 pages while they were abusing him, and while the joyous current 
 of royal life was bounding through his veins ! Thank God, 
 Casca Llanna found out his calibre, weight and worth to the world 
 before any human being ever dreamed that James Fisk, Jr., was 
 walking on the narrow bridge of death. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 233 
 
 " And thus the world goes round and round. 
 And men their courses run, 
 But ever the true comes uppermost, 
 And ever is justice done." 
 
 Green be the turf above thy dust, and greener be thy memory, 
 James Fisk, Jr. 
 
 "Would to the great God of Heaven that civilized mankind 
 would heed the lessons laid down in this book, and cultivate 
 Love, — ever-blessed, sweet, ennobling love, — instead of giving 
 a loose rein to passion. Elsewhere in this volume an incident 
 is related concerning " A penny's worth of wit ; " and with what 
 awful and amazing force does the mighty lesson come home in 
 view of the dreadful tragedy of poor Fisk's end, and the deep 
 damnation of his taking off ! Here a man of most splendid parts 
 is cut off in the midst of one of the most brilliant and extraor- 
 dinary careers ever run, not only by any man of our times and 
 nation, but of all time, and in the great wide world, because 
 under the infernal spell of magnetic passion, — for the man 
 never loved the siren who brought death to him, nor did the 
 siren love him, — she only loved his money. But he loved 
 his wife — and she loved him, thank God again ! — and the one 
 proved it in his last earthly act, and the other demonstrated the 
 deathlessness of true affection, when, at the last dreadful mo- 
 ment, when all earthly hope had fled forever, she clasped his 
 neck in her wifely arms, and with streaming eyes and broken 
 voice asked the good God to pardon his sins and take his soul 
 unto Himself. May Heaven forever bless thee., Lucy Fisk, thou 
 true woman and noble wife ! Bless thee and thine forever and 
 forevermore, because thy conduct in that sad hour demonstrated 
 the everlasting regality of thy womanhood, thy wifehood and 
 thy loving trust and truth. 
 
 And the fawning cyprian, — she who wound herself about the 
 husband of this regal wife, — what of her ? Did she shed a bitter 
 tear when the man fell who had raised her from beggary to opu- 
 lence? — fell by the hand of the maniacal dolt, whom in turn 
 she had also lured from the arms of a loving and true-hearted 
 wife ? — No ! — Yes ! No tear shed she because foul murder 
 had been done, and a great soul hurled from time to eternity in 
 
234 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the twinkling of an eye ! No tears from her breast welled up in 
 Borrow and bitter agony, like those tapped from out the heart of 
 her whom the siren's wiles had widowed ! — but plenty of tears 
 that the murdered victim could no longer be leeched ; and more 
 tears that his slayer could no longer assist her in her dreadful 
 war against two honest wives. Would that the eyes of men 
 were opened, that they might see, and, seeing, realize, that one 
 ounce of a true and honest love is worth more to a man than the 
 wreathed smiles of all the harlots who have trod the earth, down 
 the ages, from Aspasia and before her, to the last brazen-toned 
 advocate of free love, now ranting from the rostra of the land. 
 True these last say they mean free love, not free lust, — totally 
 forgetful that love carries sex along with it, and between man 
 and woman, outside of kinship, ever, always, means Possession ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The woman who complained that the working between meals 
 would be the death of her, in spite of the known strength of her 
 constitution, which could stand any amount of — rest, must 
 have had a very curious eye, and one well worth studying. In 
 common with everybody else, the author once thought that he 
 perfectly understood a woman by a single glance of her eye, but 
 the very one whom he thought he knew best, proved to him that he 
 really knew very little ; paralleling the experience of the " Hard 
 Shell" Baptist itinerant, who relates his adventures, saying 
 among other things that during a visit to New Orleans, 
 " Whar the} 7 have cream-colored horses, gilded carriages and 
 marble saloons, with brandy, and sugar in them ! — where hon- 
 est men are scarcer than hen's teeth, and a strange woman once 
 took in your beloved preacher, and bamboozled him outen two 
 hundred and fifty-seven dollars in the twinkling of a sheep's 
 tail ; but she can't do it again, Hallelujah ! ' for they shall gnaw 
 a file and flee into the mountings of Hepsidam, whar the lion 
 roareth and the whangdoodle mourneth for her first-born ! ' " 
 
 The conviction that that particular, and therefore every other 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 235 
 
 woman, was not so easily read as vanity declared they could be, 
 came in a single glance she one day darted at him. It lasted 
 less than a second of time, but it*told a story not rehearsable 
 in an entire century of time, which, all things considered, was 
 rather a discouraging conviction in itself, yet was the direct 
 means of recalling to his memory certain conversations held with 
 some of his Arab friends on the banks of old Nilus, and under 
 the gray shadows of the pyramids of Sakhara, in the far-off 
 Egyptian lands. Information laid by and forgotten among 
 heaps of other notes, but which, exhumed from their long 
 graves, shall here be condensed for the benefit of those who 
 read this book. 
 
 It would be hard to name anything in the world we live in 
 more or even as expressive as a woman's eye. In the woman's 
 eye elsewhere indicated the writer found one day an entire 
 heaven, and on another occasion a well-thronged inferno, with 
 as large a variety of devils as would suffice for fifty Miltons and 
 ten thousand Dantes. Almost always really unreadable by 
 man is a woman's orbs, save when lit up with passion, and then 
 he can read it easy enough, while everj-thing else therein — and 
 their name is legion — is a sealed book, as a common thing, save 
 when she flashes forth unutterable sentences, and sends them, 
 shafts of burning fire, through his very soul, whereupon Mr. 
 Man speedily concludes that he didn't know quite as much about 
 her as he thought he did. There is nothing more atrociously 
 common than for a man to totally and wholly misinterpret a 
 woman's glance, — its expression — its meaning — its mysteri- 
 ous echo-ness,to coin a word fraught with an ocean of deep and 
 marvellous significance. There are legions of fools who pass 
 for wise men, wholly unable, by reason of detestable vanity and 
 absurd egotism, to see in a lady's brightly flashing eye, in her 
 pleasant, glorious coyness, or in her sweet, soul-charged smile, 
 or gayety or freedom of demeanor, anything more than passion 
 or impulse that-ward, and an invitation for themselves to 
 make advances, when in fact both the mood and the thought are 
 as far off as Boston is from China, or the North Star from 
 Japan, or themselves from genuine manhood ! These men take 
 
236 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 things for granted vrithout ever asking the reason why, or con- 
 sidering what the result may likely be. They are ignorant of 
 human nature, and woman's*especially. They are chronically 
 sick and, to a sensible lady, sickening. They never see any- 
 thing but sensualism in the world. They behold nothing great 
 or glorious in woman, — nothing nobler in her than the capacity 
 of ministering to one side, and that a perverted one, of their 
 natures. The flashing eye of the petite brunette, and the 
 snowy expanse of billowy bosom of the stately blonde, are alike 
 suggestive of wicked thoughts to them ; and the idea that a 
 woman is a rational, thinking, responsible power in the world, 
 and an immortal soul besides, created for loftier purposes than 
 they dream of, never once crosses their minds — what little of 
 such they may chance to possess. 
 
 While woman's eye, when she chooses to hide herself behind 
 it, is a deep riddle, yet when her soul is really engaged and 
 moved, he who runs may read ; and driven be he from among 
 honorable men who shall then seek to take advantage of what 
 that glancing story tells. If he does so, and to her ruin, it is 
 equally certain that it is likewise to his own ; for time and na- 
 ture, if not herself and society, are sure to make reprisals 
 sooner or later, and in one form or another. 
 
 If a woman's affections are in motion, it is a very difficult 
 thing for her to conceal herself if she lets her eye be seen by an 
 expert. It matters not how strenuously she may strive to dis- 
 guise her real feelings so far as her e} T es are concerned, for he 
 who truly knows her nature can read her soul at will through 
 the magic iris-play. 
 
 A curious fact : If a man does not win a woman in the very 
 first hour of his company with her, no other being by, his vic- 
 tory does not amount to much. Another : If a woman is able 
 to resist a man's importunity for the same time, under the same 
 conditions, she is safe from that man forever afterward ; and, 
 if she subsequently loses sight of prudence, the fault is on her 
 own part, and that is quite as great as his rascality. And here 
 is the reason why : Human magnetism is the vehicle of love 
 and ardor, friendship and attachment. Fluid : it mutually flows 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 237 
 
 from each to each, and the man's magnetism fills her every fibre 
 within that time, which it can never wholly do thereafter. 
 When thus charged she will be weaker in herself and more 
 strongly drawn to him ; and if her strength is not great enough 
 to mean as well as say " No," she is lost. When the tides are 
 highest they begin to ebb. Therefore, hereafter, let no woman 
 who reads this book complain of seduction, for by her will she 
 can drive back the flow magnetic in spite of Mr. Would be, 
 and if the return tide begins before the hour ends, she is safe 
 from Jiim, if not from herself. 
 
 Many men have seen marvellous wonders, but no man ever 
 yet saw a woman who was willing to admit herself to be in the 
 wrong. Some one else is alwaj's to blame, never herself. This 
 is queer, but true. Now, why is this thus? The writer don't 
 know ; reader, do you? 
 
 One very strange bit of absolute and wholly unpardonable 
 ignorance prevails almost universally among people of the 
 Christian faith, by which is meant those of Caucasian lineage. 
 They do not know how to preserve wedded love, and fail to 
 comprehend that the very means whereby it is ruthlessly killed 
 can also be made the instrumentality of its purification, growth, 
 intensification, and perpetuity. This truth is, or ought to be, 
 clearly self-apparent to every reasoning, thinking person. For 
 instance, if he, she, or they, icill to engage the other's soul, and 
 blend therewith, and cleave thereto, there comes into play a 
 permeating potency, and power, and energ3 r , which, growing 
 stronger all the while, finally and permanently, fairly seizes 
 upon, and joins in one, both souls ; and when that fusion 
 takes place aberrations from fascination by others become a 
 simple impossibility. 
 
 We are all reachable through the avenues of sense, and of all 
 others most readily through that of sight. Thousands of wives 
 and husbands there are who have never once looked each other 
 fairly in the eyes, and, therefore, have wholl}- neglected to use 
 the most direct road to their partners' souls. General knowl- 
 edge of us all, and of woman especially, must be had mainly 
 through the eye. Properly pursued the study leads to grand 
 
238 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 knowledges and results. In a little while a man becomes an 
 expert of the eye, interpreting its sneer, contempt, hope, 
 volupty, passione, hatred, envy ; its glare, denial, invitation, 
 repulse, defiance ; its beams of love ; its tenderness of affec- 
 tion ; its filiatude, anger, rage, suspicion ; its lust of power or 
 of joy ; its hardness, invulnerability or yieldingness, and jeal- 
 ousy. Nor is this all ; for even a spotless virgin's eye reveals 
 the fact, and more, and a young girl's eye will tell the story 
 whether her virtue has been tampered with successfully or not. 
 And yet more; if a married woman is false and "illegally" 
 favors another than her lord, — which is mighty apt to be the 
 case in these rapid daj^s, — if she fails to have true love at 
 home, the favor granted to another is photographed in her 
 eye so completely that it can plainly be read ; and, by a good 
 Feronee, even the features of the favored one, the time, place, 
 the circumstance, can be traced unerringly, simply because 
 past events, like future ones, invariably cast their shadows ; 
 so that by virtue of the magnetic laws of space, time, matter, 
 and the human frame, nothing whatever can be hidden. 
 
 Whosoever loves not, exists not. There are various loves in 
 existence ; as beauty love, which don't amount to much ; free 
 love, which amounts to less ; that which has, perhaps, vulgarly 
 been stigmatized as "puppy love," — nothing to it. Only 
 womanly, manly, conjugal love counts for anything in the 
 game of life, and not that till well tried. 
 
 That is, indeed, a very poor marriage and worse love which 
 fears to trust its object out of sight. For perfect love casteth 
 out fear, and begets a confidence which volcanoes and earth- 
 quakes of passion shall be powerless to shake. How much of 
 such is there in our world to-day ! The principle of perfect 
 confidence is almost entirely lost sight of in these modern 
 times, and general distrust on both sides is the rule, and abso- 
 lute trust the rare exception ; and that distrust, and its sad 
 effects, result from a variety of causes, the most prominent of 
 which shall here be briefly set forth. In the first place both 
 men and women, while acknowledging sex and the majority of 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 239 
 
 its exterior reasonings, are almost universally ignorant of its 
 deeper meanings. They practically use life as if it were to end 
 at the door of the tomb, and notoriously in effect ignore the 
 stupendous truth that we are but in the very early morning of 
 a ceaseless day, a life of activities infinitely stretched out and 
 prolonged. People reason that sex is for love, passion, utility, 
 change, and little dream that it means fathomless things, ener- 
 gies, creations, whole eternities of unimagined beatitudes and 
 glories. 
 
 On a less exalted plane it means magnetic ebb and flow, 
 equilibrium, chemical peace, electric and nerval fusion, soul- 
 mingling, and the dual unification. They realize the human 
 and external reasons of sex, but do not cognize its internal and 
 divine ones. They fail to realize that among all the other 
 countless triplicities of being, life and nature, there is one also 
 to love, and to its expression, passionally, or amorously. How 
 few people there are who realize soul, spirit, body, these three, 
 as constituting themselves personally ! and that nothing they 
 do is well done unless these three do it ! How few realize that 
 a child parented of body merely, must be body mainly, from the 
 cradle to the grave ! or that one who is the result of a psychical 
 or mental attachment without the rare fire kindled of energetic 
 physique, which should accompany it, must ever be pale, thin, 
 slender, ethereal, lack nerve, bone, muscle, but at the same 
 time have an overplus of brain ! Now there might be a ming- 
 ling of soul, spirit, body, to the construction of a true marriage 
 and its living fruits, to say nothing about its moral, mental, 
 metaphysical and domestic results. All departures from the 
 triplicate union is descensive love ; its products will be descen- 
 sive also, and the children be angular, one-sided halfnesses in 
 every conceivable respect. 
 
 It is a heavy crime against Nature, God, and the human race 
 to in any sense be a party, active or passive in any wrong, es- 
 pecially of the sort here alluded to, because all mere passionalism 
 alone is an infernalism pure and simple, and invariably, sadly, 
 demoralizes both the woman and the man ; and its results are 
 
240 WOMAN, LOVE, AKT) MAIUllAGE. 
 
 of a merely negative, transient character, inevitably followed 
 with smothered disgust and quasi hate on both sides. 
 
 The true and divine marriage, on the other hand, is mutually 
 ascensive, celestial, normal, healthful, non-exhaustive, un- 
 depletive. It is a holy, pure, mutual joy, — fit for immortal 
 gods ! It is the lamp that lights the road of life. It satisfies 
 soul, the hope, the spirit, and the natural demise of such a 
 blending leaves husband and wife in the arms of God, lapped 
 in the dear delight of Heaven itself ! For all of which reasons 
 it is clear that wrong and vice do not pay, never did, will, and 
 never can be fruitful of other than the most atrocious, debasing, 
 unmanning, unwomaning results ; and the less one mingles 
 therein the better for the world and man ! 
 
 Were these truths well-grounded in the common mind, there 
 would be fewer Medeas and Ariadnes in the world ; for men 
 would cling to their wives and homes, instead of searching for 
 lame excuses for deserting both. If love at home prevailed, 
 the itch of gab which so alarmingly prevails among the strong- 
 minded would cease ; and mothers-in-law would find their 
 present occupation gone, — for it mainly consists now in sowing 
 distrust and dissensions in families where concord otherwise 
 would and ought to reign, and peace and love have supreme 
 sway. 
 
 Husbands should be loving, not merely intellectual, to their 
 wives ; for a woman seldom cares a snap about theories, logic, 
 and reasonings, for she wants and demands practical love, 
 affection, fondling, loveness! Give any woman this, and her 
 whole personality will be one rapt smile ; and for it, in any way, 
 she will pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks. 
 "When she has that, even though the father of the child she is 
 bearing be in everything below par, } T et will she so perform her 
 maternal work as to give a comparative giant of mind to the 
 world and mankind ; as an illustrative proof of which let the 
 case of the mother of the man known as Napoleon III. be 
 adduced : Verhuiel, the Dutch admiral, was famous for nothing 
 except his love intrigue with Napoleon's mother, who bore that 
 very famous child to the Dutchman, after the absence of her 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 241 
 
 husband had been prolonged something over a year; yet so full 
 was she of the glory-sphere exhaled from the name Bonaparte — 
 that she so filled her unborn child with it as to make his body 
 a Dutch Verhuiel, and his soul as true and grand a Bonaparte 
 as ever drew the breath of life ; and yet not one single tiny 
 drop of the Corsican's blood ran in his veins ! 
 
 " Ah, me ! ah, me ! how bitterly we regret that we failed to 
 know each other better ! " comes in mournful strains to many a 
 parted man and woman's soul, across the bitter waste of 
 strangled years. How many of us have taken false steps, and 
 in anger said cruel things, and acted foolishly, hastily, child- 
 ishly. My God, my God, what would we not now give could 
 we recall the past, and undo the silly deed we did, under the 
 frenzied impulse of a moment's madness ! How many a man 
 clasps the dear memory of her he left, and tearfully, in the lone 
 silence of his soul exclaims, " O woman, woman, I did not know 
 your value ; and now you are gone, gone, and I — I am so deso- 
 late ! " and as the thought rises, the salt tears flow apace. But 
 alas ! it is too late! Great heaven, too late ! 
 
 How many thousands of women are there in the world to- 
 day upon whose sky of peace and love and hope the sun has 
 forever set in this world ! Women who in a weak moment have 
 made experiments — fatal ones — and lost their all. "Women who 
 have listened to the oily tongues of bad advisers, and in a fit 
 of anger, jealousy, or whim, have left husband, honor, home, 
 and hope behind ! What would they not give to be once more 
 queen of the household they have abandoned for — a shadow — 
 perhaps — full of promise, but empty as a hollow sound? 
 
 There was none of this sort of thing before the birth of Rad- 
 icalism and Pseudo Eeform. There -will be none of it when 
 they are dead and in their graves, — graves which every honest 
 man and woman will help to dig both wide and deep, and there- 
 in bury them from mortal sight, forever and forever more ! 
 
 The writer of this series of books has been, by circumstances 
 of birth mainly, compelled to fight a most fearful and long- 
 enduring duel w r ith the world and the age, from the moment, 
 when, at five years of age, he was thoughtlessly deserted, and 
 
242 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 left alone in the streets of New York — his natal place — by 
 the man who called his mother wife, and although not beaten — 
 because truth and her champions are never wholly defeated — is, 
 nevertheless, exceedingly weary. And even so is it, in other lines 
 of life, with countless thousands of others, — they are weary, 
 weary, weary, and the burden of their life-song is rest — rest ; — 
 oh, for but a little rest ! for Ave are aweary, aweary ; would that 
 we were — dead ! — husbands — some of them — but wives main- 
 ly, all of whom have had all defeats and no triumphs at all. 
 It was to champion the cause of such, that Casca Llanna 
 turned his pen, and raised his voice — without a solitary friend 
 to encourage him by word, or look, or a single dollar — alone ! 
 against that which desolated his hearth and home, as it has 
 thousands of those upon whom it breathed its fetor — American 
 Ultraism. Hopeless task? Never a bit of it. Those who 
 think so are little aware of what an earnest soul may do ; and 
 Casca Llanna will fight it out so long as life lasts. Villains! 
 what have you done with his wife? So long as the grass 
 springs upon that little grave on the hillside ; so long as the 
 memory of her tearful face, uplifted for mercy from the carpet 
 of wrong ; just so long will he thrust back the lie in the throats 
 of the liars ! — those who dare claim that marriage is a thing to 
 be abolished — that satanalias of unbridled license may take 
 its holy place. 
 
 Let the good fight go on ! Help ye, who have felt the snake's 
 fangs in your quivering hearts ; help strike this atheistic monster 
 down ! Strike hard and strike home ! For victory must come, 
 and the religion of Christ take its rightful place in human hearts 
 and human practice, to the utter destruction of all the "re- 
 formatory " abominations on the planet. 
 
 Not a few of the love-mischances of people are referable to 
 their own faults. Thus many a man wrecks himself on the 
 alluring rocks of beauty, heedless of its meretriciousness, and 
 neglectful of what ought to underlie it, — integral character and 
 moral worth. Just so insane are thousands of the other sex % 
 who, vainly imagining their fair and market will last forever, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 243 
 
 put on airs and rush into bliud flirtation and coquetry, keeping 
 it up with a fervor, until some fine day they awaken to the 
 startling fact that their power is vanished, and they must either 
 put up with a marriage de convenance, utterly repugnant and 
 distasteful, in extremis, or enter the desolate domains of old 
 maidhood. 
 
 Well does the writer remember a case in point. Close by 
 where he once dwelt, in the far-off sunny south, hard by one 
 of the baj-ous which carry off the surplus waters of old Mis- 
 sissipi, and empty them in the Mexican Gulf, through the Lou- 
 isiana lowlands low, there dwelt a regal woman, of peerless 
 beauty, and imperious and imperial spirit. Her father's plan- 
 tation was full seven good miles long ; and was cultivated by 
 fifteen hundred black bondmen and women, in the clays before 
 the whole South ran crazy with the idea of Empire based on hu- 
 man slavery. The cotton crop and sugar gave eight hundred 
 thousand dollars annual income ; and if by chance money was 
 scarce, and the spirited beauty wanted something, she never 
 hesitated to pack off a black man or two for sale in the sham- 
 bles of New Orleans or Baton Rouge. 
 
 None so gay, brilliant, and conceited, as the belle of the par- 
 ish ; and of course her hand, heart, and her heirship to broad 
 acres, brought many a sighing suitor to her feet ; and when she 
 had woven the meshes and web of her spells about them, and 
 the}' were inextricably entangled, she sat down to her Paris 
 grand piano, and gave them their rejection and dismissal, while 
 aloud and sweetly she plaj^ed and warbled, — 
 
 " On the Banks of Allan Water." 
 
 Everybody knows that slavery was in some sense a patri- 
 archal institution ; and that some favored servitors made them- 
 selves both free in speech and familiar in act, with their mas- 
 ters and their ladies, to a degree quite surprising to those 
 northerners, who, while professing great love for the negro and 
 his cause, nevertheless hate and despise him with an unction and 
 fervor never 3 r et known in the South. Philanthropy toward the 
 black man has in nine cases in every ten been a mere profession 
 in the North ! — a convenient hobby to ride toward political pre- 
 
244 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 ferment, or stump oratorical notoriety. The love for the black 
 was and is a hollow pretence ; for the negro was always nearer 
 to the white man's heart in the South than to the pale Yankee 
 of the East ; and a black has a fairer chance to-day in the South 
 than in the East. Indeed, may God help the man of even a drop 
 of colored blood in the North, for he is the pariah of pariahs ; 
 and though he has the talent and genius of a Raphael or Le 
 Sage, yet whatever thief or harlot with a white skin meets him 
 in the North, feels warranted, by the fact of hue, in grossly in- 
 sulting him at any time, and anywhere, and is practically backed 
 in so doing by society at large, — except at voting time ! 
 Bosh ! Northern philanthropy is a sham and utter cheat, as 
 well as much of northern morals. 
 
 But to resume the story : — 
 
 Well, on that plantation was an old negro who made quite 
 as free in the family affairs as if his color and relationship were 
 both of the proper stamp ; and Uncle Ben, surprised at his young 
 mistress discarding so many suitors, one after another, made 
 bold, one day, to " ax de reason why ? " " Because, Uncle Ben, 
 it suits me to do so — that's all ! " she replied, and forthwith 
 broke out with : 
 
 " On the Banks of Allan "Water." 
 
 By and by the war came ; victory gave her crown to northern 
 brows ; slaves became freedmen, freedmen became fifteenth 
 amendments, and these last were transformed into legislators, 
 members of congress, senators, and foreign ministers. Confis- 
 cation followed the war, and great families were broken up, and 
 great estates divided into small cotton and sugar farms, tilled 
 by those who were once peons of the soil. 
 
 Our aristocratic family shared tke common fate, and its 
 members killed or were scattered abroad in the land. Then, 
 ah, then, how bitterly the belle mourned her folly ! for now she 
 had no protector ; while time and trouble dashed with sallow 
 lines her once brilliant cheeks, and — she fell — for she sold 
 what was left of her beauty, and for a time maintained a wild 
 sort of independence and — defiance. But by and by even that 
 failed her, and pride caused her to change her mode of life, and 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 245 
 
 to seek consolation in another line of conduct, and in a higher 
 grade of life, in one of our northern cities, where whom should 
 she meet one day, but jolly old Uncle Ben, and " Why, bress de 
 Lord, dis chile reckon dat am de young missus ! hi, yah, yah!' 9 
 "Yes, Uncle Ben, it is me; I am poor now, — these eight 
 years past, and" — "Dat am enuff, Missus, Old Ben" hab got 
 plenty land, and some money, an you'se welcome to bofe, — 
 bress de Lamb ! But den I gone done tole you so, long ago ! " 
 — " Told what, Uncle Ben ? " — " Why, I done tole you ef you 
 didn't stop broken de gemman's hearts, and didn't take one ob 
 dem for a husband, dat one day, fo' de Lord, you'd be jis whar 
 you is." — " Where's that, Uncle Ben? " — " Why, jis zackly 
 whar you is now — 
 
 " On de banks ob Alum water!" 
 
 There are two distinct worlds in which we live on earth ; but 
 then only here and there a person can be found who fully real- 
 izes this fact. These worlds are the female and the male. In 
 California and the West, generalty, there is a great prepon- 
 derance of the male element ; while in Massachusetts and New 
 England the female one predominates largely, and the mag- 
 netic sphere of woman abounds everywhere with an almost 
 overpowering force. This is generally true, also, of all large 
 cities, especially London, Paris, Hamburg, New York, Berlin, 
 Vienna, and, above all others, Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, 
 Newport, and Lewiston, in Maine, and Boston, which excels 
 them all ; hence these places, and all others like them, are full 
 of one-sided, angular people, and a chronic, amative fever pre- 
 vails ; in consequence of which, as a general thing, women are 
 at a discount, and not half so well cared for or appreciated as 
 elsewhere, in localities where the male element prevails. Now 
 in a household where either one element and influence — hus- 
 band's or wife's — so far predominates as to hold the other in 
 entire abeyance and subjection, there can be no real love or 
 assimilation. There must be mutual yielding or there can be 
 no mutual happiness. 
 
 The inside of marriage, that which no one outside can see, 
 
246 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 or know anj-thing whatever about, the inner and very often 
 bitter life of it, needs reconstructing and reforming on a vast 
 scale, else we will never get rid of the myriad skeletons in the 
 closets of Christendom, especially the Yankee part thereof, 
 where such things abound much more than anywhere else, — 
 even wife-beating England ; for your average British wife is not 
 near so finely strung or sensitive nerved as is her average 
 American sister, and the English and Canadian wife is noto- 
 riously ten times happier than are those this side the border or 
 the sea ; consequently, the marriage ship hereaway is so rotten 
 that its bottom has nearly fallen out ; indeed, it has, in many 
 instances, dropped down altogether, and let its freight plump 
 and square into the surging seas of discontent, whence a few — 
 precious few, too, compared to the masses — manage to get 
 their heads above water by climbing up the rough and jagged 
 rocks of divorce. Divorce ! nine-tenths of them the fruit of 
 rank perjuiy, or gum-elastic truth stretched to its utmost ten- 
 sion ! But fair or foul, it is far too easily attainable. Of 
 course, in extreme cases, such a step is justifiable ; but never 
 ought to be allowed until the parties prove that, in spite of long 
 and persistent trying to mend matters, all efforts have proved 
 futile. In such cases let divorce come, and the quicker the 
 better for all concerned. 
 
 It is rather ominous that divorces have increased at least five 
 hundred per cent, since the advent of woman's rightism ; and 
 not a dozen people have really been rendered happier thereby ; 
 on the contrary, regrets deep and bitter have rankled many a 
 heart. 
 
 Objecting to quote others, yet it is impossible to resist the 
 insertion here of a floating scrap cut from some ephemeral 
 newspaper, in the subjoined words : " The most determined and 
 dangerous foe of the marital relation is found in a perverted 
 and exaggerated individualism ; a doctrine which gives vitality 
 to most of the arguments advanced in favor of woman suffrage 
 by many of its leading advocates." There, that's just it ', for the 
 irrational gabble of the woman's rights advocates, as a general 
 thing, has a deleterious effect upon whatever woman listens to 
 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 247 
 
 it. It tends directly to unfit her for the place and position God 
 himself assigned her in the economies of the world. Under- 
 stand : the right to vote if she wants to is not here denied her. 
 Let her do so, and stuff ballots till she gets sick of it. But will 
 that make her any happier at home ? Will she retain her deli- 
 cacy? Will she preserve and conserve, nay, will she deserve 
 that tender and chivalrous gallantry and respect accorded her 
 now? Can she then command a tithe of the homage which 
 every well-bred man accords her at present? Doubtful. Will 
 not the sphere of party and politics unsex woman? Are not 
 its chief advocates now either grannies in pantaloons, or what- 
 is-its in crinoline? By no means, would the writer advocate 
 the subjection of women ; but, rather, would grant them perfect 
 equality on the middle grounds of life, but would insist that 
 neither man nor woman should trench upon the spheres natu- 
 ralty existing as sex distinctions. To both, he would and does 
 say, Live out your full life, each for him and herself; but let 
 there be a still larger field, wherein the individualities shall 
 meet and fuse, and wherein the dual oneness, the double unit 
 shall abolish sex distinctions as such ; and let that rule and 
 reign, for that field is The Home. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have the misfortune to be married to this 
 woman," was actually said apologetically. But what a state of 
 society is the present, where the like is thought, if not said, by 
 thousands in every section of the countiy, every day in the 
 week, and every week in the year ! An author said, " Who so 
 short-sighted as a married man, except it be a married woman ! " 
 That is true — and false at the same time — for of all the short- 
 sighted people, a married man is the most so, but if a married 
 woman is short-sighted, she is long-headed enough to make 
 amends for it, for her head and his ears are very often of exactly 
 the same longitude. Ten men in a thousand may possibly be 
 able to outwit women ; but every woman in fifty millions, if she 
 makes up her mind to it, will triumphantly circumvent all the 
 men yon could pack between Sandy Hook light-house and the 
 star Alcj'one, and not think it a difficult task either ! If women 
 in Turkish harems, where the jealousy of ages guards them, are 
 
248 WOMAN, LOVE, AKD MARRIAGE. 
 
 equal to the task of deceiving their masters, — and they are! — 
 how easy for their superior white-skinned sisters to do the same ! 
 Husbands who imagine that threats, ill-treatment, or espionage, 
 will keep their discontented wives true to them, had better lead 
 blind apes to water, for their efforts are worse than thrown 
 away ; for a woman thus watched and treated takes the most 
 exquisite delight in showing her smartness, and if she likes, put- 
 ting horns on her benedict's head, just for pure deviltry alone, 
 when not a fibre of her entire being otherwise prompts the act. 
 
 Love only can keep a woman true ! There's no mistake about 
 that matter. It were an easy task to write out here hundreds 
 of proofs of this statement, but as all women know the fact, and 
 all men ought to, and may learn it from experience, if they do 
 not, we will simply let the statement stand exactly as it is. 
 
 Appearances are proverbially deceitful, and none more so 
 than those assumed bj r a wife who has reason to think herself 
 injured, and is determined to play an ace to the deceiver's king, 
 or a " this " for his " that." There is one particular power which 
 every woman has, which men are generally unpossessed of, and 
 that is she can and will laugh and make merry, apparently, at the 
 very moment her heart-strings are strained, cracking, snapping, 
 breaking, and her soul is full of bitter woe, and sweltering in a 
 bath of anguish, — acute, exquisite anguish ; and if she wills to do 
 so, will gooff into hysterics of mirth to all appearance, over what 
 actually pierces her very soul. All men who really know women 
 at all, know this. Where is the man who will not merely put 
 himself to inconvenience to oblige and happify another, but 
 actually and voluntarily submit to repeated mental and physical 
 torture for that other's sake? Such men may exist, but they 
 are very scarce ; — while there is not a married woman in the 
 whole wide world, who has not done that very thing as many 
 times almost as she has hairs on her head ! — facts which most 
 men are wholly blind to ; but which it were for their own hap- 
 piness to carefully and continually bear in mind, if they would 
 have marriage to be what it ought, — a feast of fatness, lasting 
 for life ; instead of what, painfully and generally it is — the di- 
 rect opposite. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 249 
 
 If a man or woman, in the loftier sense, is true to him or her- 
 self, it is impossible to be false to others, for self-respect is the 
 first integer in a genuine man or womanhood. 
 
 But rampant empiricism prevails in all things — at least it did 
 so in this writer's time. " I'm your friend and well-wisher ! " 
 Quack ! quack ! " I adore you ! " Quack ! " You're my idol, my 
 life, my love, my all in all ! " Quack ! quack ! quack ! 
 
 The man who makes fun of love is an ass, and a wretch in 
 the bargain ; and a woman who does the same is weak in the 
 upper story. How gleefully people read of the elopement of a 
 wife and the breaking up of a family ! yet let the same disaster 
 happen to themselves, and who so hungry for commiseration 
 and sympathy as they ? — these very people who gayly grin at the 
 misery of any wrecked heart and shattered home. Most of us 
 remember the story current during the slavery-abolishing war. 
 Those who have not heard, will here find the story just as cut 
 from the columns of a newspaper. Saj's the scrap : — 
 
 " Those who are fond of a little life history are requested to 
 read the following by ' Brick ' Pomeroy. We rather imagine 
 that Mr. Snicksnacker is not the only gentleman who might 
 sing that song : — 
 
 " • Who's pin here since Ish pin gone ? ' 
 
 " Hillflicker Snicksnacker, a Teutonic vender of sour krout, 
 wooden combs, crude cabbage, striped mittens, cotton suspen- 
 ders, and such ' little dings,' with true patriotic zeal, left his 
 home in La Crosse at the commencement of the war, and en- 
 listed as a slop groceiy-keeper behind a sutler's tent on the 
 Potomac. When he went away it was with the intention to 
 make some monish if it took all summer, and nobly did he fight 
 it out on his line. How he did it is best told as he related it to 
 us on his return last week : — 
 
 " You see, Mr. Bumroy, der trum peets, und der call coomes 
 to go to war mit arms. Ise de batriot so much as Sheneral 
 Washburn or Sheneral Curtis, or Sheneral Butler or Sheneral 
 Bangs, or any of dem men. So I puys some little dings, and 
 
250 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 gets some bapers from de war committee, and goes mit ter poys 
 ter pe batriots, and sell my little dings, und makes some inonish. 
 I kiss mine vrow five, nineteen dimes, und goes mit der war. 
 I goes to Shambersburg, und makes much monish. Un day I 
 poke mine window out mine head to hear der serenade und 
 dink of some dings, when I see dat Shtonewall Shackson mit 
 his troops und der pig prass pand coming down der street 
 playing like ter tyfil on ter prass pand : — 
 
 " ' Who's pin here since Ish pin gone? ' 
 
 " Dat Shtonewall Shackson is ter tyfil mitfightins, and I puts 
 mine monish in mine bockets un mine little babers in mine pag, 
 and I goes as quick as never vash to Gettysburg. Und dere 
 I opens some more little shtore and sells some little dings. 
 And von day I hears men ridin down ter street like dunder, 
 und den I pokes ter winder under mine head and looks myself 
 up ter shtreet, and der comes dat t3 r fil, Shtonewall Shackson, 
 playing dat same odder tune as I heard before : — 
 
 " ' Who's pin here since Ish pin gone?' 
 
 " Den I makes mine monish gomes inter mine bockets, and 
 makes mine pag gome inter mine babers, und puts mine sign 
 on ter big shtore on de corner, so I lose more goods as I had 
 not got, und dinks I go to Wisconsin to see mine vrow as I 
 haint seen in dese two years, so long time as never vash. 
 
 " Den I gomes home, and knoks un ter door, and mine vrow 
 she makes talk and tells me, ' Who's dar? ' 
 
 " Den I say, ' Hillflicker Snicksnacker,' und she knows dat 
 is mine names, und she makes herself gome out of ter house, 
 und give me nine, seven times kiss on my face so good as 
 never vash. 
 
 " Den, Mr. Bumroy, I looks mit mine eyes, und I sees some 
 dings ! And so I ask mine vrow if she's bin married since I go 
 off to be batriot, und, if she no get married, why she makes so 
 much grow when I be gone mit ter wars ? und I gets mad as 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 251 
 
 de tyfil, und den I tinks of dat tam Sheneral Sthonewall Shack- 
 son, and his pig prass pand, and I sings : — 
 
 " • Who's pin here since Ish pin gone? ' 
 
 " Und now, Mr. Bumroy, somepody makes trouble mit me, 
 for Ise bin gone two years, und I knows some dings, und I 
 goes back mit ter war, und I sings tat tam Sthonewall Shack- 
 son all ter way : — 
 
 " * Who's pin here since Ish pin gone? ' " 
 
 Well, that's a " very funny " story — looked at by unfeeling 
 eyes ; but no one with an ounce of genuine manhood can find 
 it in his heart to laugh at any such infernal " fun" as that un- 
 questionably is. And in reply to the poor man's question : Some 
 infamous scoundrel's been there since you've been gone ! for 
 none other but a lecherous wretch, an unmitigated and diabolic 
 villain, would do an act so bestial and so mean as that ! and 
 whoever is base enough to relish that sort of thing, and not 
 feel like twisting the neck of such a sneaking rascal as destroyed 
 the peace of an honest man, stole his wife's honor, degraded 
 his family, and sowed the prolific seeds of hell and murder on 
 his hearth-stone, is not a genuine man, and deserves to be 
 treated even worse than the poor Teuton was. All such 
 " fun " as that, carries murder at its back, and he who thinks 
 it witty and smart, either to laugh at or do such damnable 
 things, is not a safe member of society, and ought to be pro- 
 scribed from all circles in which decent people move ! 
 
 It is astonishing how lax public morality is on the subject 
 under discussion. Such things are unknown in oriental and 
 even savage lands ; for there is an acknowledged sacredness 
 of married life which is universally respected, because the known 
 and accepted penalty of its invasion is — death — on the spot, 
 or wherever the spoliator of a man's home-side can be found. 
 If society here recognized the same law, there would be a 
 
252 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 sudden scarcity of villains such as ruined the peace of the un- 
 fortunate Teuton. 
 
 One terrible soul and hope-killing bane of woman's wedded 
 life in these gormandizing, sensualizing daj^s is to be compelled 
 to respond, or appear to, without inclination, and to have in- 
 clination without response. This last ground is a source of 
 great complaint by husbands — so-called ! — really it makes one 
 laugh to hear that name applied to them ! — and yet these very 
 grumblers seem unaware that it is their own fault fifteen hun- 
 dred and fifty-nine times in every fifteen hundred and sixty 
 cases. These very unwise males forget the sage adage, 
 " Where there's a will there's a way " — and not via the doctor's 
 shop or apothecary's either ! The wggr is plain, only that in the 
 general pigness it is lost sight of nearly, if not quite, alto- 
 gether. 
 
 This little rhythmical gem tells the true way after its own 
 quaint fashion. Study it. It is the Chemist's Love Song : — 
 
 "Oh, come where the cyanides silently flow, 
 And the carburets droop o'er the oxides below ; 
 Where the rays of potassium lie white on the hill, 
 And the song of the silicate never is still. 
 
 Come, oh, come! 
 
 Tumti, turn, turn ! 
 
 Peroxide of soda and urani-um ! 
 
 ° While alcohol is liquid at thirty degrees, 
 And no chemical change can effect manganese ; 
 While alkalies flourish and acids are free, 
 My heart shall be constant, sweet Polly, to thee ! 
 
 Yes, to thee ! 
 
 Fiddledum dee ! 
 
 Zinc, boraz, and bismuth, and HO -f- C." 
 
 A husband's love, considerateness, delicacy, patience and re- 
 straint should exactly equal each other, and be pitched in the 
 same lofty key ; nor, in his treatment of his wife should he ever 
 lose sight of prudence, possibility, or the chain of second causes. 
 A good chess-player never makes a move without a motive, and 
 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 253 
 
 very frequently saciifices a present pleasure in view of future 
 gain. Well, life — wedded life, especially — is a game of 
 chess on the most tremendously imaginable scale ; for some of its 
 moves are clear into eternity ; therefore it should be carefully 
 played. 
 
 Gallant, chivalrous conduct on the part of most men comes 
 to an untimely death three months after marriage, in far too 
 many cases ; and the love exhibited is fitful, spasmodic, and 
 comes oftener from oyster suppers than the sacred soul. Now 
 no sensible woman likes that sort of thing. It isn't what she 
 bargained for, and had a right to expect. She wants love right 
 from the very core of his heart, right to the core of her own, 
 and whatever it may fall short of that never fills the bill. 
 Every woman wants, and to be herself, must have, not periodic, 
 r paroxysmally, wordy gab and boast, of how much he thinks of 
 her, and all that sort of stereotyped stuff, but steady kindness, 
 attention, caresses, love ; and when she's kissed by him does not 
 half so well appreciate a sudden touch, and whiskered wipe, as 
 she does that electric, My God-ical I sort, which leaps from his 
 lips to the throne of her soul and wakens a marvellous music 
 there ! — something that thrills and tingles her very soul, and 
 bathes her spirit in a dear delight, — a foretaste of the bliss 
 ineffable, only to be realized in the far-off kingdoms of the 
 starry worlds. Give her that, and she's every inch a queen. 
 
 Some husbands — so-called — ruin their own homes by their 
 mean, low, and contemptible stinginess ; never give her a dollar 
 except with a grunt and a groan, and then want to know just 
 how it is, was, or may be, spent ; and yet that same man will 
 treat his comrades, who don't care a snap for him, to ten times 
 the amount she wants every week, without a solitary grumble. 
 And yet he can't buy her love with any amount of money he 
 may give her ; for, as expressions of affection, little presents 
 tell a great deal better story than forty bank-notes. And yet 
 the writer thinks the husband who plays bank-notes will seldom 
 lose. 
 
 What woman needs most in these days is protection from the 
 
254 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 secret and hidden, as well as the open, brutalities of husband- 
 age. That she can only have from the man himself, who is only 
 man when he protects her from himself; and he won't do that 
 unless he really loves her. 
 
 Without a woman has love she is extremely liable to become 
 morbid and restive, in which state she is exceedingly apt to pro- 
 fess attachment to her domestic lord ; manifest it to some one 
 else, — for money, — or other advantages ; and feel it for a third 
 one in reality, and for love ! 
 
 As said already, a perfect marriage is a perfect fusion and in- 
 terblending of two distinct individualities into one, neither of 
 whom can ever be what they were previous thereto ; because in 
 this third state they so intermingle and become incorporated in 
 every sense, as to even take each other's features ; and they 
 are, for all scientific purposes, emphatically a unit, a oneness 
 conjugate, indissoluble in the flesh, and more so in the spirit, — 
 exactly as was meant to be the case in the beginning. 
 
 Very few people there be who realize marriage in this celes- 
 tial sense and degree ; and when you find a pair who do, make 
 a mark of it, for it is good for the eyesight ; and yet there 
 ought to be myriads of just such, ay, and can be — for the try- 
 ing. Few realize that it actually takes two to make a complete 
 one, and that the whole world is full to repletion of married 
 pieces, rather less than halfnesses on the average. 
 
 Another chemist understood himself — and the subject — 
 when he wrote to his sweetheart, saying : — 
 
 " I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me. 
 Our mutual flame is like the affinity 
 That doth exist between two simple bodies. 
 I am potassium to thy oxygen ; 
 'Tis little that the holy marriage vow 
 Shall shortly make us one. That unity 
 Is, after all, but metaphysical. 
 Oh ! would that I, my Mary, were an acid — 
 A living acid; thou an alkali 
 
 Endowed with human sense ; that, brought together, 
 We might both coalesce into one salt, 
 One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou 
 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE . 255 
 
 Wert carbon, and myself hydrogen ! 
 
 "We would unite to form olefiant gas, 
 
 Or common coal or naphtha. Would to hearen 
 
 That I were phosphorus and thou wert lime, 
 
 And we of lime composed a phosphuret ! 
 
 I'd he content to be sulphuric acid, 
 
 So that thou mightst be soda. In that case 
 
 We should be Glauber's salt. Wert thou magnesia 
 
 Instead, we'd form the salt that's named from Epsom. 
 
 Couldst thou potassa be, I aquafortis, 
 
 Our happy union should that compound form; 
 
 Nitrate of potash — otherwise saltpetre, 
 
 And thus, our several natures sweetly blent, 
 
 We'd live and love together, until death 
 
 Should decompose this fleshly Tertium Quid, 
 
 Leaving our souls to all eternity 
 
 Amalgamated ! Sweet, thy name is Briggs, 
 
 And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we 
 
 Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs ? " 
 
 Nothing whatever can happen without adequate producing 
 causes ; and, as said before, chemistry, in both its material and 
 mental or metaphysical departments, is that universal cause ; 
 for it obtains of the social, domestic, mental, moral, affectional, 
 amatory, as distinguished therefrom ; and of the emotional and 
 devotional worlds, quite as much as of the purely plvysical ; for 
 the affinities, sympathies, attractions, repulsions, and direct or 
 oblique antipathies, are even more clearly drawn and marked in 
 the hyper-material realm than they are in the more circum- 
 scribed domain of pure physics. A demonstrative case in 
 point : If a woman marries a man, strong, forceful, full of 
 varied energies, who afterward sinks or loses his verve and 
 manness, a chemical change, and dynamic as well, takes place, 
 of course, in him, aud a corresponding one is wrought in her 
 feelings toward the emasculant, the result and upshot of which 
 is, that he can no more retain her respect, hence womanly affec- 
 tion, than a humpback whale can play Belle Helene on a jews- 
 harp ! 
 
 A newspaper scrap lying on the desk where this is written, 
 says : " "Woe to him who lacks energy in this age of push. He 
 
256 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 is a pigmy among Samsons. The little life he has in him is 
 sure to be trampled out. Onward is the word, and the vigorous 
 marchers are pitiless. They time their steps to the quick beat- 
 ing of their own hearts, and keep moving while the pulse-throb 
 lasts." Few will deny so plain a thing, because its truth is 
 printed in its very face. It is doubly true of all that relates to 
 marriage, so far as the abstract Woman is concerned ; for 
 beneath the individuality of every female there is a vein of 
 what is common to the universal sex, — "Womanity, to coin a 
 phrase, — an esprit du gendre, nameless, but positive. A natural- 
 born, or society-manufactured male imbecile, whether mental, 
 moral, affectional, or phy sical, is the utter abomination of every 
 true, or even half-woman on God's broad footstool ; and she 
 just as instinctively despises him, or rather it, as a robin-red- 
 breast despises a snow-bird, or a San Francisco Gavroche does 
 a heathen Chinee. It never was, and never will be, in any 
 woman to love or respect an} r thing that calls itself a man, but 
 is so in appearance only. Men sometimes do, but a woman 
 never did, and never will, take the will for the deed in any 
 respect whatever. She hates a phantom man thoroughly and 
 completely. 
 
 There's a great deal of difference between the prose and 
 poetry of life ; which fact is finely hit off in the subjoined 
 morsels of genuine bosh and wit : — 
 
 " Our friend, David Barker, Esq.," says an Eastern paper, 
 " who has produced some of the best poetry ever written by a 
 Maine bard, pleased at a little incident that happened to his 
 family (the first occurrence of the kind), gives vent to his feel- 
 ings in the following imaginative piece : " — 
 
 "mt child's oeigin. 
 
 " One night, as old St. Peter slept, 
 He left the door of heaven ajar, 
 When through a little angel crept, 
 And came down with a falling star. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 257 
 
 " One summer, as the blessed beams 
 
 Of morn approached, my blushing bride 
 Awakened from some pleasing dreams, 
 And found that angel by her side. 
 
 " God grant but this — I ask no more — 
 That when he leaves this world of pain, 
 He'll wing his way to that bright shore, 
 And find the door of heaven again." 
 
 Whereupon some fellow of the practical sort, and without 
 any imagination, and not possessing the " divine afflatus," 
 attempts to destroy the little illusion of David, as follows : — 
 
 " st. peter's reply. 
 
 *• Full eighteen hundred years or more 
 I've kept my gate securely tyled, 
 There was no ' little angel ' strayed, 
 Nor one been missing all the while. 
 
 " I did not sleep, as you supposed, 
 Nor left the door of heaven ajar, 
 Nor has a ' little angel ' left 
 
 And gone down with a falling star. 
 
 " Go ask that ' blushing bride,' and see 
 If she don't frankly own and say 
 That when she found that angel babe, 
 She found it by the good old way. 
 
 *' God grant but this — I ask no more — 
 That should your number still enlarge, 
 That you will not do as before, 
 And lay it to old Peter's charge." 
 
258 WOMAN, LOFE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A friend hands the following squib, in reference to the 
 members of the strong-minded sisterhood : — 
 
 11 When lovely woman stoops to folly, 
 And finds too late that men betray, 
 She has a remedy that's jolly, 
 And she must take it in this way : 
 
 " Just let her purchase a revolver, 
 And load it with the greatest care 
 And the strong-minded will absolve her, 
 Jf she goes shooting then and there ! " 
 
 And so would the writer — provided said revolver was not 
 pointed at some male victim, but toward her mother's only 
 daughter — provided that mother's daughter was sane, and not 
 possessed of the devil, horns, hoofs and all, as well as of some 
 disease. 
 
 They make a great mistake who imagine that when backs are 
 clothed, shelter afforded, and stomachs supplied, the whole 
 duty of man toward woman is accomplished ; for it happens 
 that souls, hearts, affections, need care and feeding as well ; and 
 that there are mental, social, moral, religious and esthetic 
 appetites to be appeased, even more than those of mere 
 physique. 
 
 For a sober man to get angry at a woman shows a weakness 
 forthwith to be corrected. It is seldom, if ever justifiable, and 
 causes a great deal of chronic grief and trouble. Woman's 
 temper, on the contrary, is something over which, by reason 
 of her very sex, she has not always full control ; hence husbands 
 who do not want their firesides a continual war-camp should 
 never allow temper to get the upper hand ; if they do, there will 
 be a perpetual wreck of saucers and a crash of plates, instead 
 of peace and quietude. He should always keep cool when her 
 
WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 259 
 
 blood is up — that is, -when the mysteries of her being craze her, 
 and make her say and do things strange and wilful. She is to 
 be pitied then, not blamed and foolishly quarrelled with. 
 Forbear ! It will pay ! and above all never bother a woman 
 when she is working, — and especially when knitting feet for 
 little stockings! She will thank him for it — some day. 
 
 Those who love should not forget, as they do, wives as well 
 as husbands, that there are times when absolute solitude and 
 let-alone-ness is a great blessing, and when either his, or hers, 
 or even an angel's presence is irksome, anno}"ing, and we would 
 give half the world to be unmolested even for one single hour. 
 Kisses, fondlings, caresses, embraces, are dear and exquisite 
 delights — in their proper time and place ; but even these may 
 be inopportune, — especially when a man is bowed down by 
 some overwhelming trouble, some sudden and terrible up-burst 
 of misfortune ; and when a woman is passing along some of the 
 dark crypts and corridors of mystery, while her soul is searching 
 for something rare and hard to find, to incarnate in her baby's 
 soul. 
 
 People should heed this, else both parties are liable to get the 
 matrimonial ague, — a disease very prevalent in these days, and 
 wherewith many shake off the marriage tie ! ' 
 
 If a husband would but once consider what a woman has to 
 go through, — the unutterable, racking, tearing, fearful agonies 
 of childbirth, — he would never do aught to render her unhappy ; 
 while as for the unmarried villain who brings an innocent girl 
 to that pass, and then refuses to right her, or who deserts her 
 then, when she has proved her love and devotion to him, hell, 
 if there be one, has no place too hot for him to be consigned 
 to — for quite a spell — in summer time too — down below, 
 and — well, enough on that point, except to say that no greater 
 wretch lives, save only such as thrive by child-murder, and no 
 punishment can be too great for such a wretch, or any one else 
 who dares to thwart God's purposes by putting out the eyes of 
 an immortal being, and keeping a human soul out of the world. 
 Murder of an adult is awful, but the passionless slaying of an 
 unborn child is a deed blacker than ever yet was forged by 
 
?60 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE, 
 
 devil brains in the deepest pit of Pandemonium. Just think of 
 a puny wretch shaking his fist in God's face, by strangling a 
 new-born baby, and saying to Deity, " Thus do I spoil thy 
 labor and hurl etei-nal defiance in thy face ! " 
 
 But there are those in the world who persuade themselves 
 that the sin of child-murder, before birth, is a venial one. 
 But these people- must stand before the Infinite — ay! before 
 their own consciences, — over there — beyond the darkly-rolling 
 river, and will meet the pale, phantom train of victims of those 
 "harmless murders," — for every one of them, even if slain 
 eight months and twenty-nine days before the due season of its 
 birth, IS A HUMAN BEING, — its destruction Murder ! — will 
 just as surely be there to fling back the foul deed upon its 
 slayer, as that Eternal Justice rules and reigns ! This is God's 
 Eternal Law ! 
 
 Some while ago the present author, in a previous work, 
 quoted the essence of Madame George Sands' (in " Consuelo") 
 phillipic against, — not marriage, but the method of its cele- 
 bration ; to the effect that hearts that love need no rite or ring 
 to bind. That opinion will not appear in the next edition of the 
 book containing it, for although it is in some sense true, yet 
 society has rights, as well as individuals, which, taking pi'ece- 
 dence of these latter, are, for the good of the consolidarity, 
 bound to be respected ; and no marriage is really such if these 
 saving rules are not fairly, squarely, and openby complied with. 
 
 If a man or woman takes advantage of a lapse or legal quib- 
 ble, it shows them to be dishonest at heart, and that they have 
 no intention to be bound by the mock ceremonial the}*- have 
 gone through ; nor any respect for the divine relation they so 
 outrageously burlesque. " Mecliumistic " marriages; "■pas- 
 sional-attraction " marriages ; or any other performance of the 
 rite aside from such as general society has, of its own free 
 choice, established and ordained. As to the numerous spirit- 
 ualistic marriages, — which ignore all license and publicity, — 
 they are immoral, and therefore void, and to be held in even 
 deeper abhorrence and contempt than the shameless liaisons 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 261 
 
 which disgrace our cities, and dot the entire land with plague 
 spots and leprosy. 
 
 Marriage was not made for man so much as man was made 
 for marriage, because in it only can he be very man ; but outside of 
 it he is but an apprentice thereto, just as a woman falls short of 
 fulfilling her lot until inside of marriage she has known the 
 deathless love of } T oung, and felt the milk pains tugging at the 
 gate of her soul to let in new floods of glory from God in the 
 eternal heavens. 
 
 The holy desire for it you may not repress, you must not stifle, 
 you shall not impede, restrict, or hinder under heavy penalties 
 exactable hereafter in other worlds than this. No matter how, 
 in view of special interests, such judgment may oppose it in a 
 given case ; to do it is wrong, and all the deeper, if the hearts 
 concerned are loving ones, and their happiness demands it. It 
 is the voice of God from the deeps of human nature, and ought 
 always to be listened to and obeyed ; while he or she who pass 
 willingly into celibate graves disobey the highest command 
 of the Eternal One. 
 
 As to who shall, or who shall not, perform the rite, there is a 
 wide difference of opinion. Such persons as merely take each 
 other without a legal or religious form are faulty, and look on 
 marriage as a limited partnership. They are but " respectable " 
 social brigands ; for if t\xej refuse to be governed by, and com- 
 ply with, the laws and courtesies society has established in be- 
 half of its own life and order, they are dishonest at heart, and 
 have no right to the respect of civilized people. 
 
 The following letter has been kindly furnished us by a 
 friend, who, having had deep experiences himself, has watched 
 the growth of these pages from day to day. It is one of a 
 series of letters which resulted in one of the happiest marital 
 unions that ever blessed two honest souls who dared to win 
 each other by open avowals of a sin-stained past, instead of 
 the senseless and fatal deceptions which lead so often to mar- 
 riages, which, built as they are, upon the sands, have so sudden 
 and such fearful tumblings. See ! arise, like a Phcenix from 
 the ashes, a. soul, as the baptismal of confession slowly but 
 
262 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 surely washes away the grime of error and sin — word by word, 
 torn from the dark but not forgotten past, out it comes, and a 
 soul that dared be true stands saved before you. 
 
 " Dear Sir : .... If I failed to make myself 
 understood in my former answer, this shall be more explicit. 
 And, first, let me drop all cold formalities, for a letter like 
 yours, from a heart to a heart, must be answered by a heart. 
 
 " You offer me sympathy, what I prize more than all the 
 world beside, — now that I am desole, — for which I have 
 searched in vain all my life ; and, by my own soul, I know 
 yours is as true as love and God can make it. I have felt the 
 clasping of the arms of one whom I loved. Yet how my heart 
 quivers as I kiss your pictured face ; but I do not love you, or, 
 at least, as I must before I am anything more to you than I am 
 now, unseen, as we both are, to each other. Before I could 
 give my heart to 3-011 entirely, you must become so dear that 
 no pain can touch your soul or being that would not rack my 
 own, that your life, your happiness can at any moment com- 
 mand the sacrifice of mine ; no joy in life in which you do not 
 share, and fire-walled hell better with your presence, than 
 golden-gated paradise without. 
 
 " You say you do not care about my past. I could not con- 
 ceal it from you and be myself; and, when you know all, should 
 you then say 'It cannot be,' I will say, God bless yon, for you 
 must be right. 
 
 " I shudder when I look into the past, for a love, that seemed 
 almost divine, lies there dead and buried so deep that it cannot 
 be resurrected ; yet, between me and every hope of the future 
 its hideous ghost forever rises ; in life and death 'twill be graven 
 on the tablets of my heart in characters that I fear can never 
 be effaced. Let me tell you in the briefest possible space : at 
 an early age I became acquainted with a man who claimed to 
 believe, in regard to marriage, what you and I and society do 
 not believe. We pledged ourselves in secret ; and, for more 
 than two years, I sustained the relation of a wife without the 
 name. It did not satisfy me; but it was his wish, and I yielded 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 263 
 
 trustingly j r et timidly. At the end of that time came desertion, 
 as I might have expected. But for years I could not, would 
 not see his baseness, clung fondly to his memory until I re- 
 ceived positive proof of his moral bankruptcy. Then love 
 died a sudden but violent death, for I could not love where I 
 could not esteem. Self-reproach drove me almost to the verge 
 of madness. If there had been left anything worthy of regard, 
 I could have borne it far better. You know the world does not 
 deal lightly with such, and my case certainly has not been an 
 exception. Fifteen years have passed by, and no word of ex- 
 planation have I ever before uttered. If the sin was mine, so 
 was the suffering, and I allowed no one to question me. But 
 this has forever barred me from that love which alone can make 
 me happy. Knowing all, as you now do, I am thine, or still 
 the child of fate, unloved, yet patient with God's help." 
 
 Now, what should be done with the thing that dares to call 
 itself a man, yet does a deed like that? Lure an innocent girl 
 to ruin ! — thank God, he failed ! — but tried to, under the plea 
 of heavenly marriage, without a ceremonial, being just as good 
 as the open, legal rite, and then claims kindred with honest and 
 honorable men ! Bah ! the chain-gang and State- prisons hold 
 scores of far more worttry beings ; and yet this very system of 
 moral ruin is, in these days, held up as the one to reform 
 society. "Were all the unthinking victims of such sophistry as 
 strong and self-helpful as was the writer of that letter, not so 
 much harm would come ; but alas ! where one like her is saved, 
 five hundred sink to irremediable ruin ! 
 
 What wedded people, and especially wedded talent or genius, 
 on the male part, and every woman, having the least refinement, 
 needs, is patience and forbearance. A woman cannot expect 
 her talented husband to be at all times in the honeyed mood ; 
 for, if he have a strong, original brain, to be always on a dead 
 level, like a machine, is utterly out of the question. God never 
 gives ! He always sells, and the price of mental power, 
 genius, is periodical wretchedness too vast and acute to be 
 understood easily by other than the sufferer, who, at such times. 
 
264 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 just like a •woman at peculiar epochs, is as full of quirks, turns, 
 caprices and unevennesses of conduct and character as an egg is 
 full of meat. God pity all such ! for the price they have to pay 
 for what of power is vouchsafed them is fearful indeed ! Wives 
 should try to allow something on that score ; and husbands try 
 to be as little offish, angular and disagreeable as possible. 
 Reverse the cases, and the same laws obtain, with this addition, 
 that the gifted wife has the same terrible ordeal to go through, 
 and the same dreadful price to pay, besides the earthquakes and 
 periodical upheavals incident to her sex. However much may 
 be done on both sides or either, to mitigate the evils of organ- 
 ization, by rules of art, — determined and persistent effort to 
 overcome and subdue these idiosyncrasies, with mental and 
 moral exercise persisted in, will, in time, produce chemico-vital 
 and dynamic constitutional changes quite favorable to some- 
 thing like self-equipoise, if not to radical out and out sainthood, 
 — which no reasonable person can expect ; or if they do, will 
 speedily undergo the process of disenchantment in that regard. 
 
 Such couples, — and they abound, — where one party is all 
 brains, and the other innocent of too great weight thereof, are 
 apt to lead zigzag lives, and run to seasons of continence and 
 its exhaustive opposites, on the principle of orbital periodicity ; 
 the consequence of which is, some one is unmanned, unwomaned, 
 exhausted, demoralized, physically, mentally, morally ; and, 
 by and by chronic cursedness of temper sets in, the moral and 
 intellectual backbone is broken, or permanently shaken, at 
 the least, self-reliant personality and mental stamina, genuine 
 fixedness of mind and purpose wax regularly, almost sj-ste- 
 matically less, to say nothing on the score of morals, secret or 
 open. 
 
 The woman suffers additionally in such cases, and shows it 
 unmistakably in person, gait, manner, impatience, the sulks, 
 blues, querulousness and the fidgets ; besides a whole catalogue 
 of head, back, breast and heart aches, pains, qualms — except 
 of conscience ! — caprices, whims, longings, palpitations, and a 
 numerous list of ills beside. If there were perfect mutuality 
 and response, even in these morbidities, it would not be so bad, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE) AND MARRIAGE. 265 
 
 but there is not ; for when one party is all right and straight, 
 the other is sure to be all wrong and crooked. When she is 
 agreeable, he is not ; and when he is a lamb, she is apt to be 
 tigress like ; the consequence of which is a continual odor of 
 sulphur, and sulphur engenders dislike, and that is cousin- 
 german to the pit itself : — 
 
 There is no hate like love to hatred turned; 
 Hell hath no gorgon like a love when spurned ! 
 
 and chemical exhaustion is the cause of a great deal of spurn- 
 ing, refusals, entreatings, " I wont's," and " damn you's" by 
 reason of the chronic passional inflammation begotten of too 
 great devotion at the shrine of the priapic god, solely and 
 alone. 
 
 But suppose patience to be a virtue already cultivated, still 
 it is certain that even that of an arch-seraph will wear out and 
 become non est under incessant friction, and none so bad as 
 passion ; and one o^he parties is sure to fly off at a tangent, 
 and unless love calls the wanderer back, is very likely to stay 
 flown. Here we may remark, en passant, that a great many 
 men, and some women, are utterly senseless and stupid, judg- 
 ing with what nonchalant ease they go to work to destroy a 
 husband's or a wife's true love, — to kill it outright and stone 
 dead, by some insensate caprice, whim, or folly, of which they 
 are fully aware at the time, yet insist upon doing till affection 
 is strangled, love leaves forever, and two lives are utterly 
 blasted and ruined ; and the prime cause, nine times in ten, is 
 nothing else than senseless conduct on the husband's part — 
 generally — but not always. 
 
 A singular thing may be mentioned here, which is, that per- 
 sons wholly free from abuses of the love-nature, in all respects, 
 are proof against malaria to a wonderful degree ; and if attacked, 
 recover in nine cases out of ten, whether the decimating scourge 
 be cholera, yellow fever, ague or the pustular diseases ! They 
 will rise above them victoriously with constitutions not at all im- 
 paired ; whereas those of contrary habits of life are swept away 
 
266 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 by thousands, and the few who do recover, ever afterward plod 
 through life with shattered health and disordered stomachs, 
 lungs, kidneys, liver or nerves ; and frequently the entire system 
 remains but a wreck of what it once was, and might have been 
 still, but for their neglect of that wise old saw which declares 
 that " wilful waste makes woful want ! " More than that, — 
 the debauchee develops or engenders a condition of body which 
 renders that body the natural breeding ground and habitat, not 
 only of the known four and twenty entozoic parasites which 
 infest and feed upon human vitals while the victims still live, 
 but of numerous others also, peculiar only to such as are drained 
 of vital force through excess or perversion ; besides some others 
 still, which ordinarily do not come to active life till after death 
 and burial. 
 
 Lowenbeck tells of an insect seen with the microscope, of 
 which twenty-seven would only equal a mite. Insects of various 
 kinds may be seen in the cavities of a common grain of sand. 
 Mould is a forest of beautiful trees, with the branches, leaves, 
 flowers and fruit. Butterflies are fully-feathered. Hairs are 
 hollow tubes. The surface of our bodies is covered with scales 
 like fish ; a single grain of sand would cover one hundred and 
 fifty of these scales, and yet a single scale covers five hundred 
 pores. Through these narrow openings the sweat forces itself like 
 water through a sieve. The mites make five hundred steps a 
 second. Each drop of stagnant water contains a world of ani- 
 mated beings, swimming with as much liberty as whales in the 
 sea. Each leaf has a colony of insects grazing on it, like oxen 
 on a meadow. 
 
 The life of man overtops that of all else living when norirrl 
 and true ; and all things yield life that man may continue king 
 of the world ; but for this very reason, when other forms of life 
 have a chance to prey on him, they rush to the feast with ter- 
 rible earnestness and avidity. Bedbugs, mosquitoes, flies, — all 
 leave other prey to fasten on man ; and the alligators in the 
 bayous, and tigers in the jungle, alike forsake all other prey to 
 fasten upon the royal king, man, when chance or accident 
 throws their common enemy within their reach ; because he lives 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 267 
 
 on higher food, and develops finer juices ; wherefore ho is a great 
 deal better eating, and his flesh — to them — a great deal 
 sweeter. Fancy an old tiger or crocodile sending out their 
 cards of invitation to their respective friends, with "A fine 
 old philosopher, raw. Sun-broiled young lady. Fresh baby. A 
 nice young wife, etc., etc." Are there any human alligators? 
 
 Still another dreadful fact. The debauchee, having become ex- 
 hausted and demagnetic, affords the electric and other conditions 
 exactly adapted, in the case of the male, to engender within the 
 reinal system of glands, uncountable billions of an infinitely mi- 
 nute microscopical animalculae, — the acari spermatid, — which, 
 originating in ganglionic centres, finally swarm in dreadful mul- 
 titudes throughout the body ; living upon the nervous life of 
 the victim, inducing a chronic coldness of the cuticular sur- 
 face, and a quenchless inflammation in the special organic struc- 
 tures mainly involved, and including every department and 
 tissue thereof. The same type, but a variation from that self- 
 same acarus, finds life and baleful action in the body of the 
 female debauchee, — but, strange to say, much more fre- 
 quently in wives than in open courtesans! — by reason of a 
 more frequent and liberal use of the bath — in every respect 
 whatever. 
 
 In both cases they occasion by their presence an almost 
 unbearable paroxysmal furore, occurring with remarkable pre- 
 cision in regular periods. 
 
 It is needless to state that, even as mosquitoes will drive the 
 holiest saint to absolute madness and blasphemous expressions, 
 — for the writer once actually heard a very reverend minister 
 of the gospel distinctly say " God damn," under the impelling 
 influence of a mosquito cloud in a Louisiana swamp, — even so 
 these acari, and not the fall of Adam, are responsible for a great 
 many breakages of the seventh commandment, albeit proof 
 of the same is not yet valid in our courts. This form of 
 unsuspected disease is not uncommon ; and is transmissible 
 through contact, just as is the itch, which is also an animal- 
 cular disease. 
 
 Thousands, not to say millions, have wondered why Napoleon 
 
268 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 III. — one of the ablest men on earth — so suddenly sunk to 
 almost civil and military imbecility combined, shortly after the 
 last plebiscitum, firmly establishing him and his dynasty on the 
 throne of France ; and immediately preceding the awful Franco- 
 Prussian, and subsequent Communal wars. But the true reasons 
 are clear and plain to the eye of science. He had been in 
 nearly every sense a ban vivant and unscrupulous debauchee ; 
 and, despite his immense brain and knowledge, a very foolish 
 one at that ; because from his fifteenth year he had been accus- 
 tomed to give a loose rein to every appetite and passion, except 
 solitary vice, whose demoralizing power is worse and greater 
 than all the rest combined. Of that he was free. His consti- 
 tution was strong as chilled iron, just like Verhuiel's, his 
 father's, before him ; else his excesses had been utterly ruinous 
 long before his final fall. As it was, he withstood the six rav- 
 ages of wine, women, absynthe, the pope, the flesh and the devil, 
 till the ver} r last moment. The truth is, that Napoleon's body 
 was a swarming mass, first of semi-latent, semi-active feculence, 
 whereof syphilis was an element ; and secondly, of myriad 
 hosts of minute animalculse, — nervous parasites, abounding in 
 bones, joints, muscles, skin, liver, spleen, heart, lungs, brain, — 
 all over, and eveiywhere, — creatures so small that Lowenbeck's 
 mites are elephants in comparison ! yet so vety voracious and 
 ravenous that, give them time, and they will destroy the 
 strongest, proudest, largest man that ever breathed on earth, 
 provided that man is magnetically and electrically demoralized, 
 as Napoleon was ; for it is only in such bodies they can live or 
 thrive at all. Vultures ai-e only attracted by carrion. Let it 
 not be forgotten that children inherit the evils of their parents ; 
 nor that Bonaparte III. came into this world doubly-cursed in his 
 tendencies, longings, and insatiable thirsts and appetites ; and 
 then the reader will see good causes for the to him disastrous, 
 to man beneficial results that followed on the path of these 
 tiny little worms. 
 
 During the Franco-Prussian war, a correspondent of the New 
 York Tribune wrote to the effect that Napoleon's previous ill- 
 health clung to him still, and then gave the following account 
 
WOMAK, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 269 
 
 of one form of the malady that afflicted him, — all of which 
 were caused, primarily, by his excesses, and secondarily, by the 
 parasites alluded to. Said the correspondent, speaking of an 
 examination of the case, by the ablest physicians on the 
 globe : — 
 
 " This analysis is the work of a distinguished Parisian physician, who 
 has skilfully grouped the scattered details, and by scientific deduction has 
 succeeded in producing a diagnosis, the truth of which has startled the pro- 
 foundly affected Imperialists : — 
 
 " The mother of Napoleon III., Hortense de Beauharnais, died of an in- 
 ternal cancer, and from her the Emperor received this sad heritage. She 
 was of a lymphatico-nervous temperament, and it is well known that this 
 temperament becomes the source of serious maladies, especially when 
 excesses of various kinds have in the course of life enfeebled the constitu- 
 tion. The physical sufferings of the Emperor date from an early period. 
 Before the coup d'etat of '51 they had assumed an alarming character, and 
 had taken the form of fits, more or less violent, of sciatical neuralgia, 
 whose origin was attributed, not without cause, to irritation of the spine. 
 Rumors circulated among the more intimate personal attendants and 
 friends of Prince Louis, that these attacks manifested themselves some- 
 times in a manner to cause the greatest uneasiness, leaving a general pros- 
 tration of the nervous system as the result. After the coup d'etat these 
 indications became still more painful, and in 1852, on the occasion of the 
 visit of Napoleon to the Grand-Duchess of Baden, during the night which 
 preceded a review, he was seized with a neuralgic attack, which rendered 
 impossible the least movement of his limbs, and would necessarily have 
 prevented his appearance at the review. Not wishing to disturb any one 
 in the palace, nor to miss the review, and not even desiring to inform his 
 attendants of his sufferings, he determined to remove them without extra- 
 neous help. Against these attacks he had often employed with success a 
 blister and a running cauterization along the line of the affected nerve. 
 He now prepared a blister in the following fashion : He lighted a wax can- 
 dle, and applied the burning flame all along the suffering nerve, sparing him- 
 self so little that at several places the flesh was painfully burned. The 
 remedy had the desired result, and the next day, notwithstanding the pain 
 from the burns, he mounted his horse and took part in the review. 
 
 "But a time arrived when blisters, cauterizations, and other remedies 
 united, produced no longer any effect. Their action failed before the force 
 and progress of the malady. Then hydropathy was tried. The new treat- 
 ment succeeded for some time, and delivered the patient from a dyspepsia 
 which had come to complicate affairs. This relative good health continued 
 up to 1860. Until then no appreciable trace of disease revealed itself in 
 
270 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the genito-urinary organs, beyond the fact that they were torpid and 
 required sometimes to be artificially excited. But in 18G0 new symptoms 
 appeared, and concentrated themselves principally on this point. Some 
 physicians feared the development of diabetes ; others, the stone or the 
 gravel. At this stage the illustrious sufferer was sent to drink the waters 
 of Vichy. 
 
 "A serious retention of urine here seized him, but succumbed to numer- 
 ous operations. Violent hemorrhages nearly always followed these oper- 
 ations, and manifested themselves often even without apparent cause. 
 These attacks greatly enfeebled the Emperor's constitution ; the operations 
 were sometimes followed by syncope, and urethral fever declared itself and 
 gave way only under arsenical treatment. At this moment the retention 
 appears to be fixed ; the catheter is frequently necessary, and an obstinate 
 sleeplessness often troubles the patient, with occasional painful attacks of 
 hiccoughing. 
 
 "After a serious examination of the diverse manifestations of the Em- 
 peror's disease, men of science have rejected the idea of any rheumatic 
 affection, and have agreed that the malady is a distention of the prostate 
 gland and a varicose swelling or fungus of the bladder. This disorder 
 only shows itself at intervals, increases with age, and is aggravated by 
 moral and atmospheric causes. The consequences of the disease are very 
 grave, thus : all diseases of the genito-urinary organs — the stone perhaps 
 excepted — attack the brain, that is to say, they affect the moral and intel- 
 lectual faculties. 
 
 " The temper of the patient becomes sombre, suspicious, peevish, pu- 
 sillanimous ; men and things appear under a sinister aspect ; the wfll be- 
 comes weak, and is subject to the most contradictory changes ; a project 
 formed is immediately abandoned for another not any more durable ; a 
 decision is hardly ever finally and frankly made ; there are always mental 
 reservations, cunning replaces boldness, a feverish irritation takes the 
 place of calmness, the real proportion of objects and events are exagger- 
 ated, and one is always ready to employ against a reed the force necessary 
 to uproot an oak. "When a man has been afflicted eight years by a fungus 
 of the bladder, whose progress his physicians have been unable to arrest, 
 his days are numbered. After eight years of treatment the disease, aggra- 
 vated by age, is nothing more than a series of relapses, each one more 
 serious than the last, and of intermissions of convalesence each one less 
 and less reassuring. His hour will come, not perhaps to-morrow, but in a 
 day not far distant." 
 
 There's not the slightest doubt that the war between France 
 and Prussia; the war of Parties in Spain; the war between 
 Spain and Cuba, and all the rest growing out of them, originated 
 
TTOifAX, LOVS, AXD MARRIAGE. 271 
 
 in identical causes. Napoleon, we know, was put in a warlike 
 mood by the state of his organic viscera ; while all the world is 
 aware that there would have been no war had there been no 
 vacancy of the Spanish throne ; there would have been no 
 vacancy of that throne had not Isabella been turned out for 
 amatoiy and passional indecency, which the Grandees of Spain 
 could not and would not endure ; she would not have been thus 
 indiscreet in her amours, had she not been diseased, — probably 
 with the parasites mentioned, which parasites rendered her in 
 certain respects completely insane ; and she took Afarfori, a 
 soldier, raised him to the highest rank, as said before, — and lo ! 
 the consequences, — almost a world in arms, and hundreds of 
 thousands of men ruthlessly slaughtered ! Verily there is a con- 
 cupiscent devil abroad in the world ! 
 
 One of the greatest preservatives of conjugal love and its 
 accompanying happiness, and one which men in the under and 
 middle layers of modern society are altogether too prone to 
 either neglect or lose sight of as a general thing, is a careful 
 foresight and providence for the future, and without which a 
 great many couples are on the high road to disagreements, 
 which gradually unravel the chords of sympathy, and are very 
 likely to end in a permanent fracture and disseverance of the 
 real tie between them ; for no woman with common sense but 
 will shudder at the dismal prospect of an unprovided widowhood, 
 which may be hers any day in the year, from a myriad of seem- 
 ingly fortuitous circumstances, wherewith all human life is envi- 
 roned. However much couples may cling to each other in an 
 external observance of their union, they will cling still closer if 
 the probability of future penury is wholly removed ; for, say 
 what you will, one of the prime sources of very great trouble of 
 wedded life is the untamable fear and dread of the threatened 
 visit of the gorgon want, — an invisible character, but one whose 
 lash is felt alike on soul, spirit and body, — for he is the uni- 
 versal horror of the whole race of man, and is guilty of more 
 crimes, and has tampered successfully with the honor, integrity, 
 peace, welfare and virtue of more human souls, than any other 
 
272 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 one thing beneath the smiling heaven. By him alone, and 
 single-handed, more men have become thieves, liars, robbers, 
 swindlers, drunkards, cheats, gamblers, forgers, and murderers, 
 and more girls have bartered off their purity, more wives fall- 
 en, than under the influence of any other power on the globe. 
 Let but his presence be keenly felt in a family, and there's a 
 chronic trouble in every nook and corner of the otherwise happy 
 and contented household. It is a drop of bitter gall in life's 
 sweetest cup ; a veiled horror at every meal, poisoning each 
 mouthful taken, and mantling every brow with a leaden pall. 
 Its presence is a perpetual unrest ; a fever which unstrings 
 every muscle of mind and body ; or a freezing breath congealing 
 every spring of life ; and all the more if, besides the parents, 
 there are children exposed to its relentless scourgings. It sug- 
 gests robbery to the impoverished father, and whispers dishonor 
 to mother and daughter alike ; while under its lash sons forget 
 themselves, and jails and poor-houses flourish apace. It delights 
 in thinning churches and replenishing brothels. It is the father 
 of crime, the instigator of all sorts of wrong ; the patron of 
 wretchedness, builder of state-prisons ; and it strews the floors 
 of hell itself with the haggard forms of myriad victims, and 
 stabs love dead with daggers of ice ! Husbands, husbands, pro- 
 vide for the future ! Wives, wives, learn the good lesson — 
 economy ! 
 
 This gorgon can be banished by the trying, — by firm reliance 
 on the better selfhood, and on God, the far-off yet near-at-hand 
 Supreme, some of whose ways are not past finding out, — for one 
 of them is to help him who tries to help himself, as well in finan- 
 cial as in any and every other sort of matter. 
 
 If God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, you may depend 
 that the lamb himself is by no means idle, and takes most ex- 
 cellent care not to leave the whole business to the Protector, 
 for his lambship has an abiding faith in the efficacy of good grass 
 and well-cured hay ; and as for clear water, why, he is a perfect 
 connoisseur, fully comprehending one branch of chemistry, and 
 who occupies most of his time between bucking, running, frisk- 
 ing and jumping bouts, in converting the grass and hay aforesaid 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 273 
 
 into excellent mutton cutlets, layers of beautiful white fat and 
 sundry pounds of good white fine wool for winter wear. 
 
 If we earnestly try to make life what it ought to be, if our 
 hearts are truly human, we can nestle closer and farther in the 
 heart of God, whom bigot fools and free-love knaves search for 
 in vain, and deny ! and we can realize a deeper and strangely 
 mystic, but gratifying Providence, altogether above and beyond 
 any that cold and icy " philosophy " recognizes or material 
 science can account for. And when the soul is tensioned up and 
 awake, we can sense the play of the divine fingers, feel the 
 Hand upholding us, and our ears, if we but listen well, can 
 catch the echoing music of the far-off Heaven ; but then it is 
 only when fierce and terrible storms have swept the soul with 
 hurricanes of fire, that we are prepared to listen, and to expect, 
 therefore receive the aid of that lofty Might, which, in such 
 tribulation hours, even the most heady and sceptical of us all 
 are compelled to reverence, acknowledge and adore. 
 
 He alone, and no power beneath Him, can supply our greatest 
 needs, give us courage to bear up against the heavy pressure, 
 and to face the cold and bitter blasts which chill and freeze the 
 very marrow of our souls. , 
 
 The writer of this has proved God, and found him ever true ! 
 He cannot say the same of any human being, save his mother. 
 All others, when weighed in the scales which alone adversity 
 furnishes, have been found wanting^saye only in the case of two 
 men ! — God bless and prosper them ! — Isaac B. Rich, of Boston, 
 and John F. Kapp, of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, the only two on 
 the broad earth who ever did the writer of this a disinterested 
 favor in his hour of need. Despair and death had long since 
 been his had not his hopes been fast anchored in the Eternal 
 Heart, and ruin had come had not He averted it. He never 
 distrusted God ! and at night, throwing himself in his mother — 
 Nature's — sweet arms, and reclining his head on God's bosom, 
 says : " Parents, protect and take care of th}' wayward son, for 
 lo ! are not all the philosophers, critics, editors, and other sim- 
 ulacra, together with the world, the flesh, and the devil, against 
 him, spilling his drink, and soiling his food? Protect thou him 
 
274 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 from all evil, the liars and the lies ; the hatred, malice, and 
 slander of the weak ones, who perhaps know no better ! " And 
 his Father and Mother hear and answer, and he relies on 
 them ! 
 
 Well, what is the result? Why, as a general thing the 
 Hidden Hand has sustained him in the battle against fearful 
 odds and deadly foes — mainly in the guise of love and friend- 
 liness ! and the road of life has not been altogether scoriae or 
 unpleasant ; for beautiful spots of rare, rich greenery, spangled 
 with many a daisy eye, have gladdened him here and there all 
 the way along, even though every step of the way was straight 
 up-hill and against the wind and tide, and all the storms blowing 
 squarely and fairly at his head ! God, after all, is a great 
 power, and faith in him is a perfectly safe and sure investment ! 
 
 But, to resume the thread of thought. Generally accompany- 
 ing poverty, or attendant upon the fear of it, and which, so far 
 as the perpetuity of domestic love is concerned, and which is an 
 equally great curse, is the periodical fits of right-down anger, 
 and which is the rule rather than the exception in most families, 
 but especially in those where one of the parties to the marital 
 compact monopolizes all the brains, or sets out to do so, justly 
 or not. No man likes to be constantly reminded that his brains 
 are poorer in quantity or quality than those of his wife, even if 
 she be his "better half;" and but few women, on the other 
 hand, can brook being given to understand that all she's worth 
 is to dress, cook, drudge, and replenish the earth, by stress of 
 unwilling maternity perhaps ; for really her mission, however 
 poor a wife she may be, is immensely more than either or all 
 these combined ; and if one of those perpetually growling hus- 
 bands could but pass a year or two away from woman's charm- 
 ing society, or dwell among females of the genuine barbaric 
 tj'pe and order, where mere sex and nursing is all in all, so far 
 as she is concerned he would, undoubtedly, very soon learn 
 how to appreciate, value, and, consequently, how to treat the 
 woman who, whatever may be her minor faults, does not hesi- 
 tate, for his sake, to constantly sacrifice herself in a hundred 
 ways, and who runs scores of risks of her life, and health, and 
 
TTOAfAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 275 
 
 happiness, to be a wife to him, and gratif}- the man of her 
 choice. Think of this, my gay man ; study that, woman ! 
 
 Fits of temper, anger, moodiness, waywardness, and the 
 glums, are all foes of love and loving, when met in the same 
 spirit for which and the fear of want there is a perfect cure ; 
 and that cure lies in following this bit of advice to every 
 married man, and also to every lover : keep tour temper, and 
 get tour life insured ! for a paid-up life-and-accident policy 
 in a family is a perpetual peace-maker, joy-bringer, pleasure- 
 spreader, hope-cultivator ! — a bank of more than " national " 
 security ! It is an ever-current, never-protested note ; a non- 
 discounted cheque on the bank of affection ; a buyer of the 
 right kind of well-seasoned kisses, and the tenderest and most 
 meaning embraces, right straight from the heart ; and, lover and 
 husband, pray don't forget that there's a mighty sight of differ- 
 ence between the kiss or embrace of a woman who, when she 
 gives either, does so because she can't help it, and because it 
 does her good to lavish her love upon you ; and that of another 
 one who, when she condescends, merely does so for form's sake, 
 and because it's the custom of marriage land. With a life- 
 insurance document safe in the bureau drawer, a married man 
 has Christmas, St. Patrick's day in the morning, and the Fourth 
 of July all the year round ; besides having an ever-present, 
 never-lying remembrancer that it is not all of life to live for 
 self alone, nor all of death to die on his own account ; and 
 that bit of paper, with two or three great red splotches of wax, 
 and half-a-dozen spidery looking signatui'es, is much more 
 than it seems to be ; for not only is it an assurance against 
 want in the times to come, but besides is an unmistakable 
 demonstration, alike patent to men, angels, and God, of a love 
 grand, pure, sweet, deep> sincere and holy ; conjugal, paternal, 
 so good, so trve, making all so glad ; a proof so great that it 
 actually — in importance, and the momentous consequences 
 hinging upon it — outweighs any other single thing or act a 
 man can possibly do by way of proving to his wife and chil- 
 dren that he really means, as well as says, "7 love you!" 
 May Heaven eternally bless the man who first invented life 
 
276 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 insurance ! It is the bounden duty of any man, old or young, 
 rich or poor, dark or fair, to attend to this first prime dut}' of 
 every one who has others leaning on him for comfort and sup- 
 port, because there's no telling how soon death may come, or 
 present wealth take unto itself wings and fly away. 
 
 A true man, if single, should do it for the sake of those he 
 may thereafter join his life with ; and a thoughtful married man 
 would as soon think of exposing those he loves to the pitiless 
 storms of wintry days, naked, barefoot, and ahungered for bread, 
 as to risk, in these days of financial cataclyms, and monetary 
 earthquakes, their chances of poverty, and gaunt, grim want, 
 when he should be gathered to his fathers, and gone away on 
 the breast of the ether to his last and far-off home, by neg- 
 lecting, even for a single day, if, in his power, by hook or by 
 crook to do it, this one great paramount duty of duties, su- 
 preme above all others, the procurement, first of a life, and 
 then of an accident policy of insurance. Again we say, be- 
 cause deeply felt, God bless him, whoever he was, who first 
 invented life insurance ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVHL 
 
 A lawyer once fell in love, — during an honest fit, — and, in 
 the exuberance of his new sensations — both of them — indited 
 an Ode to Spring, — instead of indicting some poor devil with 
 an exhausted exchequer, who owed him, or some one else. 
 Said he : — 
 
 *' Whereas, on certain boughs and sprays, 
 Now divers birds are heard to sing, 
 And sundry flowers their heads upraise. 
 Hail to the coming on of Spring ! 
 
 " The songs of those said birds arouse 
 The memory of our youthful hours, 
 As green as those said sprays and boughs, 
 As fresh and sweet as those said flowers. 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 277 
 
 " The birds aforesaid — happy pairs ! — 
 
 Love 'mid the aforesaid bowers enshrines 
 In freehold nests : themselves, their heirs, 
 Administrators and assigns. 
 
 " Oh, busiest term of Cupid's court ! 
 
 "Where tender plaintiffs actions bring — 
 Season of frolic and of sport ! 
 Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring ! " 
 
 But, alas for the poetry of love, even in bird-life, for they quar- 
 rel and fight as regularly as the days come round ; and only on 
 the highlands of the human kingdom can love really be what it 
 ought. At present the Spring of love and married life too often 
 turns into the roughest kind of a "Winter of chronic discontent. 
 All, all for want of a little practical self-culture, and yielding- 
 ness of disposition from each to other. 
 
 The poet who wrote the following lines was close upon the 
 right : — 
 
 " Great truths are dearly bought. The common truth 
 Such as men give and take from day to day, 
 Comes in the common walks of daily life, 
 Blown by the careless wind across our way. 
 
 " Bought in the market at the current price, 
 
 Bred of the smile, the jest, perchance the bowl, 
 It tells no tales of daring or of worth, 
 Nor peers beneath the surface of the soul. 
 
 " Great truths are dearly won — not formed by chance, 
 Nor wafted on the breath of summer dream ; 
 But grasped in the great struggle of the soul, 
 Hard buffeting with adverse wind and stream. 
 
 " Not in the general mart, 'mid corn and wine ; 
 Not in the merchandise of gold and gems ; 
 Not in the world's gay hall of midnight mirth ; 
 Nor mid the blaze of regal diadems ; 
 
 " But in the day of conflict, fear and grief, 
 
 When the strong hand of God, put forth in might, 
 Ploughs up the subsoil of the stagnant heart, 
 
 And brings the imprisoned truth-seeds to the light ; 
 
278 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MATiliTAGR. 
 
 " Wrung from the troubled spirit in hard hours 
 Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain — 
 Truth springs like harvest from the well-ploughed field, 
 And the soul feels it has not wept in vain." 
 
 Of all the hard truths to discover and go by steadily when 
 found, the hardest is : That no self-seeking person can possi- 
 bly be happy ! Joy, to be real, must be reflected back upon us 
 from some one in whom we have first kindled the fire that love 
 feeds on ; or to whom we have freely given that better manna 
 whose office is to fatten souls, and clarify the conscience. 
 
 Love, in the higher, deeper, broader sense, is most undoubtedly 
 an essence of the soul per se; but as times go, and men and 
 women are, as at present, so very imperfectly organized, faultily 
 made up, semi-refined, — for but few men are really civilized 
 below their chins, and only a few women in the masses are 
 rounded out, full and complete in the really womanly character, 
 — a very common mesmeric infatuation takes its place, and 
 passes current as the genuine quality. How can it well be 
 otherwise in these days, wherein the finest student at his desk, 
 or the leading belle in the circles of the haut ton, are both com- 
 pounded of bad food and worse air, built up day by day, and 
 year by year, with and by the blood and flesh of abused and 
 murdered beasts, — for not one animal in a thousand but meets 
 its death in agonies of mental horror ! Penned up for weeks 
 together in sight and smell of the gory shambles, until its very 
 horror is crystallized in every ounce of its flesh, — intended for, 
 and consumed as, human food ! There is not a legislature in 
 this country, but whose first and supreme duty is to see that no 
 beast shall ever know, till the blow falls, that death awaits it; 
 and then our meat will not at the same time nourish our bodies, 
 half poison our blood, and wholly demoralize our natures. For 
 as an ox dies, so will be the effect of its flesh on all who eat it. 
 France understands this thing perfectly. 
 
 It will pay any one to be careful of their diet — as to the 
 quality of bird, fowl, beast or fish ; and to avoid all lowly-or- 
 ganized food, as well as in the matter of cookery ; for whoever 
 handles our food should be our well-wisher and friend ; else, if 
 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 279 
 
 they hate us, their malificent magnetism poisons every mouth- 
 ful we partake of, — which is just why Solomon said, " Better 
 is a dinner of potherbs where love is, than a feast of stalled 
 oxen where hatred reigns," — or to that direct effect ; for what- 
 ever affects our bodies acts straight upon our souls. 
 
 Whatever may be love's foundation and root, certain it is 
 that its play is at least half sensuous. Now, by this term is 
 not meant that its manifestation and action is wholly, or even 
 in great part, always toward the sex instinct ; but that that ele- 
 ment is very seldom entirely absent therefrom ; and that it is 
 generally sensuous, nervous, electric, magnetic, and, lastly 
 ethereal. Perhaps this latter had better be defined and illus- 
 trated. It shall be done. 
 
 A person sees another, imperfectly, yet that glimpse proves 
 very disquieting, even though no word was spoken. The effect 
 was ethereal, — purely, — ■ that is to say, the smitten one has 
 suddenly, instantaneously, been pervaded, and filled up with the 
 ethereal aura or nerve-sphere emanating or radiating from the 
 combined soul, mind and body of the other, which halo, to a 
 greater or less extent, surrounds us all. Now whoever wills to 
 do so can prevent the nervous impressionability to said spheres, 
 and if girls and wives would but exercise that repellant force of 
 will, the seducing gentry would speedily fiud their occupation 
 gone ; for, as said already, a woman is perfectly safe so long as 
 she resists the subtle action of this pervasive sphere or aura ; 
 and no woman on earth is safe who allows it to pervade her 
 body ; for it is a part of him whoever he may be, and if he gets 
 that advantage, she is lost, unless his honor or an accident res- 
 cues her from the peril ! 
 
 But, on the other hand, whoever exhausts this ether of their 
 own act commits slow but certain suicide ; for when that is gone 
 life and power too are on swift pinions fleeing far away ; hence 
 to preserve and re-establish it when wasted, is the true end 
 and aim of a manly, womanly life. While we have it, people 
 love us ; when it is gone, they drop off from us like summer hail 
 from slaten roofs. Health, as a general thing, will preserve this 
 ether, and the power it implies, as well as that of its generation 
 
280 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 and evolution, to a very late period of life. And those who 
 do so are young at ninety years ; like Aspasia, or Ninon de L'En- 
 clos, — or thousands of young-old people whom we all know ; 
 whereas a young man in years is old in fact, from the moment 
 his body refuses to manufacture this potent vif, this essential 
 life of human kind. 
 
 Just as long as a man or woman are true to e^ach other their 
 respective ethereal spheres commingle and blend, and both are 
 supremely blest and happy ; but let either of them, no matter 
 how secretly, — and some married people have very shady ways, 
 
 — even once step aside, and allow the corresponding sphere of 
 another to mingle with their own, then their own is sure to 
 absorb some of that other's, and then when the husband or 
 wife brings it home, there is no longer a perfect fusion between 
 the twain, for the foreign ingredient is there to tell God's truth, 
 and prove some one false and a liar, in spite of all wordy pro- 
 testations of innocence ! God never lies ! — and in an instant 
 wife and husband ethereally antagonize each other, heaven 
 ceases its beneficent rule, and red-hot hell begins to fan its 
 fires ! And this is what was meant by the hint thrown out in 
 the earlier pages of this volume. 
 
 So long as a wife can maintain that fresh, ethereal envelope 
 
 — and she cannot do that if she is sour-tempered, fretful, 
 vinegarish, or if she is hectored to death — in more tvays than 
 one * — just so long, and no longer, can she hold her husband to 
 
 * Early in 1871, during the run of the fifth edition of the work on Love, 
 preceding this volume, "The Master Passion," the author of both re- 
 ceived the following letter, and returned the subjoined reply : — 
 
 " Chicago, Feb. 7th, 1871. 
 "Db. P. B. Randolph, — Deak Sir: — Is there any method on earth 
 whereby I can regain the love of my wife ? Once she was all my soul 
 desired; now she is cold, and meets me with a shudder. If you reprint 
 the 'Master Passion,' or write another work on Love, — which I under- 
 stand you intend to, under the name of ' Casca Llanna,' — will you not give 
 wives and husbands the precious knowledge of how to make home happy, 
 in directions where wretchedness now reigns in millions of families ? If 
 you will, the blessings of mankind cannot fail to be 6howered upon your 
 head. " T. B. W." 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 281 
 
 her side and to his duty toward her, even though there be precious 
 little of the deep and upper love between them. And when a 
 husband allows his own sphere of power to die out, as it often 
 does, from various causes, among which are too much attention 
 in some respects, too great neglect in others ; and by an excess 
 of fire to-day, and an overplus of ice the next ; or by ill-usage 
 of himself or her, he is death-sure to aim a very powerful and 
 surprisingly successful blow at his own happiness and peace of 
 mind. To keep this thing fresh and powerful requires but very 
 little effort. Neglect it, laugh at, or snap the sneering fingers 
 at a truth like this, if you will, but rest assured there will come 
 a day of most bitter and poignant regrets if you do ; for al- 
 though this is a new discovery here given for the first tjme to 
 the world, yet it is as true as everlasting Truth herself. 
 
 In a great many more cases than people might suspect the 
 magnetic and ethereal body and polar powers of love, so to 
 speak, have been destroyed altogether, or reversed to such a 
 degree, that the one who once held the other in complete affec- 
 
 " Friend "W. : — It would be impossible to publish in a book the in- 
 formation you seek, and which every wife and husband on earth ought 
 to have, because the subject is exceedingly delicate, while of enormous 
 value. However, in your case I will write it out, and herewith will en- 
 close it to you. Abide by the counsel laid down in this Golden Letter ; 
 treasure the knowledge of this golden secret, apply its rules, and happiness 
 which has fled, will assuredly return to you — and to the wife whom 
 Heaven designed to be happy, and not wretched with you. Of course the 
 information is of a strictly private character, and strictly holy too. My 
 charge for the trouble taken is not less than ten dollars in any case ; and 
 you will no doubt say that a better investment never yet was made. 
 
 "Yours, etc., 
 
 "P. B. E." 
 
 The favor thus granted to T. B. W. will also be to others, who suffer 
 from similar causes. The address of the author will be found elsewhere, 
 but he takes occasion to say that in no case will the letter be sent to 
 persons prompted by mere curiosity or morbid minds. It is intended 
 solely for unhappy wedded people, and knowingly will not be sent to any 
 other at any price, and then only on strict honorable confidence. 
 
282 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 tional bondage, has entirely and forever lost all power over 
 that one in that direction. 
 
 Comparatively happy homes have been rendered desolate by 
 the personal neglect of tidiness in a wife. Such things have 
 resulted from the habitual non-use of the bath ; and hundreds 
 of cases exist where the ethereal life of love has been utterly 
 destro3 r ed, and snuffed out, as it were, by the foul breath and 
 other noisome exhalements of a rum-sozzled apology for a hus- 
 band. Per contra: many a dying love has been rekindled, or 
 resurrected from an untimely grave, and a man's heart made 
 happy by a thorough and radical change of conduct on the part 
 of a theretofore sloven wife, to tidiness, neatness, and welcome 
 smiles. It hurts a man in his tenderest part to see a woman 
 who, all neatness, tenderness, and love, before marriage, after 
 that loses sight of her duty, and thinks, practically, that a tame 
 surrender, in some respects, is all that's needed on her part to 
 render his love and allegiance prompt and sure. A man may 
 not openly complain, but he feels these things nevertheless ; and 
 a wife who fails in neatness, in all respects, in these days of 
 cheap water and good soap, lays the axe direct at the root of 
 her own tree of happiness and comfort. Neither does a hus- 
 band very often like to put up with an overplus of strong- 
 minded airs, so rife in these days of agitation ; for whatever he 
 may abstractly think of the suffrage and ballot business, he'd 
 rather not have his wife or daughter make public shows of 
 themselves on election days ; for the private opinion of the 
 majority of sensible men is, whatever gallantry or policy may 
 induce them to say to the contrary, that ballot-stuffing and 
 highflown hustings speechifying is not the highest or most 
 radiantly glorious sphere for female action ; nor can he help 
 realizing the great truth that it was, is, and ever will be, ut- 
 terly impossible for a " strong-minded woman" and wife at the 
 same time, to be a loving one, or a true and gentle one, or a 
 careful mother at home either. 
 
 The writer of this never yet saw one of that sort, who was 
 not at least three-fourths man and one-fourth What Is It ? — and 
 this is said without disparagement of woman's right to be taxed 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 283 
 
 and represented, if she wants the latter. Equality before the 
 law, but no public voting. If the ballot was open to all the 
 women in the world, the decent wives, sisters, and mothers, as 
 classes, would refrain and stay at home. The Irish servant 
 girls would ponder on the adage : — 
 
 " Thim that's rich can ride in chaises ; 
 But thim that's poor must walk, by Jazus ! " 
 
 and go to " vote themselves a farm ! " The} 7 would, like 
 their brethren, vote early and vote often, while toward evening 
 the harlots would get up, and, after depositing their ballots, join 
 their male friends in such innocent espieglerie, as bonneting 
 passers by, smashing windows, and imbibing smashes, winding 
 up the voting farce with roaring staves to a full chorus of 
 
 " We won't go (hie) home till (hie) morn-ing; 
 Till (hie) daylight (hie) does ap-pear ! " 
 
 A genuine demonstration of human love, except for herself, 
 on the part of any one of the vast host of female agitators, the 
 whole tribe of professional " mediums" and long-winded virtue- 
 preaching, free-love practising, universal concubines who parade 
 the land and demolish homes, as Genseric did the fanes, would 
 be a miracle surpassing the loaves and fishes ; or a swindle as 
 empty of truth as the Tricksters Home and the Davenport 
 brothers, and all the rest of the swindling pack's alleged won- 
 ders are of solid truth and human honesty. 
 
 Such a woman's affectional demonstrations, if not wholly 
 vampiral, would be a wide departure from the truth ; would not 
 be really human, butsnakish, fangful, Judas-like, because utterly 
 and wholly empty of all genuine heartness, that ineffable delight 
 man sighs for and expects. Instead of this such a woman 
 would freeze a man's soul, and deck his being with icicles. He 
 may admire her, but to love her were simply impossible. Tal- 
 ented and even beautiful, she might be ; yet off the stage she 
 would be ice-cream, and / scream when on it — only that and 
 nothing more ! - ■- : - 
 
284 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 " The rights of woman who demand, 
 Those women are but few ; 
 The greater part had rather stand 
 Exactly as they do. 
 
 " Beauty has claims for which she fights 
 At ease, with winning arms ; 
 The women who want Woman's rights 
 Want, mostly, Woman's charms." 
 
 It is time too, that women began to prove themselves exactly 
 what they desire to be considered. The writer does not think 
 woman so utterly weak, puny and feeble, as to be wholly de- 
 pendent upon man's charities and championship ; but believes 
 she ought to prove herself equal to the task of working out her 
 own destiny with more courage and less whine. " It is,',' said 
 the " Springfield Republican," " high time that a woman's virtue 
 should be considered at her own risk, and that no man should 
 be liable to be shot by her or anybody else, because she loses 
 it." In these latter days, when a sharp woman tries to play a 
 game at a man's expense and gets euchred, as some of them do, 
 especially the lecturing lasses, she's very apt to declare she's 
 been " fascinated," " psychologized," " magnetically capti- 
 vated," and a lot of other stuff to the same import ; and it is 
 the " Reformatory " class who urge such lame excuses, for no 
 decent woman ever descended to such paltryisms, for the chances 
 against any man playing that game is at least five hundred to 
 one against him, and in her favor. The writer knew three or 
 four " Reformatory beats " in Boston, who were regularly ruined 
 by " Psychology" about six times a year. It is safe to say that 
 whenever a woman offers such a plea, she has tried to black- 
 mail some man and been tripped up, after the manner of the 
 " Cody, Cody" vestal of stump oratorical notoriety; or the 
 " Flora, the sharp blonde," who tried it on and failed once upon 
 a time, and was forced to retreat to her black paramour's arms ; 
 or — pshaw ! what's the use ? the names and games of innu- 
 merable specimens of the same ilk are ready to fall from the 
 pen. Mankind, beware of them, for they are gentle as sucking 
 doves, but bite like the devil ; but then, all the writer ever saw 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 285 
 
 were ultra-radical lecturing lunatics, or strong-minded reform- 
 el s of some sort, not one of whom he believed to be honest, but 
 did believe either insane or rogues ingrain, and believes so still. 
 
 If a woman has her wits about her, no man can catch her 
 tripping ; for all the absurd twaddle, spiritualistic and fool- 
 istic also, about " psychologising " is mere bosh ; and no woman 
 of an ounce of brains will ever plead such an excuse — that is, 
 none except such as are periodically " seduced" and regularly 
 ruined thrice a j r ear ; nor as a general thing will such an absurd 
 excuse be made save by guilty vampires, or old boarding- 
 house harridans of the lowest stamp — some quasi reformatory, 
 vinegar-visaged virago and termagant of whom at least one 
 fine specimen holds court in the " hub." 
 
 Let us turn from that sickening mass of moral and social 
 corruption, having punctured it sufficient to let the world know 
 its odor, and once more get ourselves into decent society, — 
 and the author admits that before he knew aught of radicalism 
 he moved in decent society ; and also after he left them, but 
 knew not what the terms meant while associating with them, on 
 the principle that to know what a movement is, you must be 
 outside, and not a part of it. No doubt radicals think them- 
 selves all right and sweet ; and no doubt, too, that buzzards 
 feasting on a dead alligator declare the thing is bunkum, but 
 other creatures think it all buncombe. 
 
 After this book was entirely written, the author while waiting 
 to stereotype it, emploj^ed himself in retouching it here and 
 there ; and on this 14th day of August, 1871, while writing this 
 identical page, he cut the following from the " Boston Herald," 
 and if any further display of the beauties of free love and Pan- 
 tarchism is needed, why, plenty more — of the same sort and 
 worse — can readily be furnished : — 
 
 "The Home of Free Lovees — One of them Charged with Rape. 
 — The New York Sunday papers state that one of the editors of W. & Co's 
 weekly has been charged with committing an outrage on a respectable girl 
 in that city, whose mother is one of the strong-minded clique. The story of 
 crime as told by the ' News,' is as follows : — 
 
 "In November last, Mrs. Miles, a sister of Mrs. "Woodhull and Miss Ten- 
 
286 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARltlAGE. 
 
 me Claflin, left Brooklyn, where she was doing a good business at 54 "Wyck- 
 off Street, and came to this city to keep house for her banker and broker 
 sisters. The AVoodhull mansion in Thirty-eighth Street had not yet been 
 fully furnished, and Mrs. Miles and her daughter, Ellie, were necessitated 
 to sleep on a bed on the floor. Ellie was then eleven years old, and was in 
 delicate health from a severe cold. S. P. A. while sitting in the parlor one 
 evening, observed to Mrs. Miles that Ellie had not sufficient mercury in her 
 system, and also that sleeping on the floor would not only retard her cure, 
 but aggravate the disease. He suggested that she should sleep in the bed 
 with himself and his own child. In his constitution he said he had a great 
 quantity of mercury, and by Ellie sleeping in the same bed with him, she 
 would absorb some of it into her constitution. Mrs. Miles consented to 
 allow her child to sleep with A. and his own child. After going to bed, A. 
 was in the habit of rubbing Ellie all over the body, to put the blood in cir- 
 culation, and ' excite the mercury in her system,' as he said. One night 
 he told her she should not wear any under-clothing whatever while in bed, 
 or he could not cure her. Next night the child went by his advice, and 
 that night A., it is alleged, perpetrated the foul crime, according to 
 her own sworn affidavit and those of her mother and aunt. Next morning 
 Elbe told her grandmother, and that aged lady warned her not to speak of 
 it, or there would be murder in the house. However, the matter became 
 known and A. was ejected from the Woodhull mansion in consequence. He 
 is, however, back living there again. Mrs. Miles has taken legal steps 
 to punish A., and has employed Mr. John D. Townsend as her lawyer. 
 Affidavits have been made containing the above facts, and are in Mr. Town- 
 send's possession, and will be laid before the grand jury at an early date." 
 
 That is just what radicalism comes to. Isn't it a sweet 
 thing? Indeed, as a reformatory agency one may ask, how high 
 is that ? and wait for an answer. Just eleven years old ! and he 
 sixty ! And such is the manhood that radicalism develops ! ! ! 
 Wonder if the other infant escaped ? And yet the man charged 
 with that awful crime claimed to stand at the head of Humanity, 
 and to be the mouthpiece of the infinite God ! 
 
 To resume. An honest marriage is the only possible field for 
 true human advancement, as in it and the joyous parenthood 
 which results therefrom can only be had that true and real educa- 
 tion which fits mankind for the immortal career opening before it. 
 "Whatever lowers the standard of general morals should be handled 
 with ungloved hands ; whatever uplifts it be hailed with gladness, 
 and one of the best agencies will be the growth of self-reliance, 
 
woman, love, jxd marrtage. 287 
 
 and the moral courage resultant therefrom. Now there are two 
 classes, one with self-reliance, and " brass" enough for a dozen 
 Gambettas or Victor Hugos ; and an immensely larger one, with 
 no self-reliance at all, — women who perpetually lean, and are 
 ciphers in the world. No home-joys can be expected from the 
 strong-minded order ; the latter class go in leading-strings for- 
 ever, and between them both genuine old-fashioned wives and 
 mothers are very scarce indeed, and a man's life is shorn of its 
 happiness as a result. 
 
 The woman who persists in old maidhood, when she might, 
 if she would, make some man happy, stands in her own light 
 both for this life and that which is to come after it. Here she 
 spontaneously gravitates to cats, puppy dogs, poodle pugs, 
 gruel and gab ; while the woman who marries and lives wholly 
 in and for what is called " society " as naturally runs to fashion, 
 gossip, scandal, " crirn. con." — if she gets a chance ; and if she 
 don't, is very apt to make one, — and the end is a divorce 
 court, — a tune played by twenty-two thousand annually, in 
 these United States alone, to say nothing of the far greater host 
 who free themselves without the trouble of a suit at law. 
 
 The woman who lives at home and for home is on the straight 
 road to a life of high, if unsounded, glory ; while all onlooking 
 angels of earth and heaven cry Saint I and point admiringly as 
 she passes by ! And when men behold such a woman they do 
 not think of mere possession, but wish their lives were blessed with 
 such companionship ; for she inspires esteem and respect, not 
 morbid desires and base thoughts, as she winds her life-path 
 along, armed with her husband's trust and love ; flanked by her 
 young darlings ! Those who see her feel lighter and purer for 
 the seeing ; and with a joyous, hilarious " Look ye there now ! 
 Isn't that charming ! " wish her a God-speed to the end of the 
 earthly journey ! It is a pleasant path to walk in, but sooth 
 to say, the grass grows long and rank in that road, because, in 
 these dismal days, it is so very seldom travelled through. It 
 won't be so always, for, in these matters there's a good time 
 coming, only wait a little longer ! 
 
 Men can stand great troubles in the world, and can recover 
 
288 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 from them, even when repeatedly stricken down ; but just trans- 
 fer the scene of even petty vexations from the workshop, 
 office, or street, to the home-side, and his moral strength begins 
 to wane forthwith ; for, if the man is constantly assailed with 
 volleys of petty domestic hail, rain, and sleet, the end of that 
 man's happiness and usefulness is exceedingly close at hand ; 
 for the perpetual snarlings and recurrence of petty broils and 
 stabs, such as thousands of able and good men experience from 
 their " better halves," will soon wear out the strongest man, 
 and plunge him, neck and heels, into sheer despair and mad- 
 ness ; for it lies within the power of almost every wife to render 
 her husband's life either a constant drama of love-joy in thou- 
 sand phases, or turn it into a dismal tragedy, whose shifting 
 scenes are but variations of the essence of trouble, and the 
 marriage, in very truth, the gall of bitterness and bond of in- 
 iquity. But a great many more modern wives travel the former 
 road, and a great deal too few the latter. Presently, they'll 
 right about face, and move in straighter paths ; for when good 
 examples multiply, the fever will be catching, and millions more 
 will, seeing such good results, try it themselves to find out how 
 the new thing works. 
 
 The soundness and perpetuity of domestic affection very often 
 depends upon causes apparently quite trivial in their nature, 
 but which, judging from effects, are unquestionably not so. 
 People often say that such and such a circumstance touched 
 them, — this bar of music, that sad story, or the other account, 
 — and they speak nearer the truth than they imagine ; for it 
 is only once in a while that our inner selves are touched at all, 
 either by reason of our own callousness, or for lack of power 
 on the part of the circumstance whatever it may be or have 
 been. Now, most married people live wholly outside of each 
 other's hearts, deeper feelings, and inner nature, and that is 
 just where the trouble comes from in marriagedom. We skim 
 over each other's surfaces, and never impact souls, or contact 
 each other's fuller, deeper, higher, better selfhoods ; and where 
 we do not thus touch each other, there you will find the per- 
 fected elements of a first-class, even if a smothered purga- 
 
1V0MAK, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 289 
 
 torium. And the intensity thereof is exactly in the ratio of 
 the degree of non-impact, or contact, of our several magnetic, 
 nervous, electric, ethereal, and sj'mpathetic natures. If these 
 do not fuse, we never actually meet ; and, in that case, man 
 and wife are really and essentially as far apart as if they were 
 separated by the vast waters of the Pacific sea. People fail to 
 realize that marriage means absolute union of the entire mental, 
 social, physical, moral, esthetic, religious, magnetic, and all 
 other departments of their nature ; and they who fail to realize 
 all this and more, in so far forth, fall short of actualizing, in 
 their lives, the sublime divinity of true marriage. 
 
 Touch ! there's a world of unimagined meanings in the holy 
 word, each one of which is as far beyond, and removed from, 
 the low sensualist's ideal, as calm and peaceful heaven is from 
 storm-tossed, fiery, malice-belching hell ! No lust-ruled thing 
 in human shape can think the sacred thing here meant ; can 
 never even reach an idea of its fading shadow, much less its 
 exquisite death, but a death preceding a whole heaven of 
 glorious and ineffable life, — life wherein every nerve is tuned to 
 such celestial tension that the very soul cries quit ! for a time, 
 that it may pass into its soft dream, and drink its fill of echoed 
 and rebounding bliss, — bliss which a bad man never can realize, 
 never can comprehend, never even halfly know ; bliss which 
 never descends to a bad woman, but only comes from God, out 
 of heaven to the pure in heart, and those who truly love ! 
 
 The external man, he who is bound up in sense alone, whose 
 nature is passion, and whose God is the dollar, can never pass 
 over that bridge. Thank God, there are some things money 
 cannot buy ; and that deep, delicious love is one of them. So 
 be it for aye ! And mental power, and lofty vision, and com- 
 panionship of mighty thought, are other items unpurchasable 
 by the combined millions of golden ducats ; thank God, again ! 
 And, above all, the sweet consciousness that, lonely and for- 
 saken though the toiler may be, in the battle for the right, yet 
 victory stands ever close at hand, to crown him or her, at the 
 right moment, after the terrible ordeal is over, after the fearful 
 tribulation, fervent, fiery assation has refined the gold within. 
 
290 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAnRIAGE. 
 
 The mere voluptuary can, at best, only skim the surface of 
 the boundless, fathomless ocean of joy, wherein the truly good 
 and loving plunge in a God-bath, and disport themselves in its 
 deeps, and grottos and sunlit caves, where profane and wicked 
 souls may not enter or intrude ! Oh, the life of perfect love ! 
 Oh, the rapt ideal of purity, innocence, trust, and truth ! For 
 this holy thing means an absolute fusion of immortal natures ; 
 a perfect blending of love-crowned human souls ; the supreme 
 acme of all possible joy ! the dying away in the arms of God ! 
 — His fingers evoking grandest strains and clivinest melodies of 
 varied and celestial music from the double-human harmonium ! 
 
 This sacred thing means even more than all that ; for as it 
 unrolls before the soul of Casca Llanna, words are found all 
 too cold and impure to express the inexpressible, unutterable 
 marrow of the thing intended, — the superlative lavement in 
 the divine stream of love, — the perfect abandonment to jo} r in 
 the waters which flow from under the Infinite throne ! It means 
 a satisfactory meal from the fruit, rich and ripe, growing on the 
 sunniest boughs of the Tree of Immortal Life ! It means a 
 losing of all outer sense, and a full awaking to the inner ! It 
 means being filled, being thrilled, with the exquisite rapture of 
 the upper skies, and bathing freely in the seas of Elysium ! 
 
 He is a poor substitute for a man who can only realize pas- 
 sion in any of its lower phases, in this supreme idea of perfect 
 blending of the entirety of two natures. He is low, mean, 
 utterly contemptible, if he fails to see that in this blending, 
 souls and spirits, not mere senses, meet and mingle, and such a 
 man must die, and live again beyond the darkly-surging river, 
 before he can appreciate the heavenly joys of celestial mar- 
 riage, in which two become entirely one, and this and nothing 
 lower is what is meant by Touch ! 
 
 Just as certain as that laws are positive in the domain of 
 physics or gross or refined matter, even more so are they true 
 and operative in the realms of mind and emotion. We all love 
 some people more than others, and those better at some times 
 than different ones. We are very often a great deal nearer 
 of kin to utter strangers than to individuals of our own blood, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 291 
 
 even our own brothers and sisters ; for it does not follow that 
 two bullets are related to each other simply because they may 
 have been cast in the same mould ; for one may be of lead and 
 the other of refined gold, — exactly as really happens in the 
 case of children born to the same parents ; for we frequently 
 have genius and stupidity, fineness and sensuality, weakness and 
 its opposite in the same family. No, it requires something 
 more than mere consanguinity to make us truly related ; and in 
 the case of wedded couples there must be something more than 
 mere consent and physical union to constitute them one ; for if 
 there be no electrical, ethereal, magnetic, emotional, mental, 
 moral and duo-chemical affinity, attraction, vraisemblance, — 
 there's not much marriage in that union ; and it forthwith be- 
 hoves the parties concerned to bring about the desired condi- 
 tions, instead of, as is common, racking their wits to make mat- 
 ters worse, rather than better ; for if the denizens of marriage- 
 dom do not fuse, mix, mingle, interblend, they are twain, not 
 one, as they should be;^ If they do thus intermingle there is joy 
 abroad in the land. If they do not, there are barriers in their 
 paths of life, which must be surmounted or cast down, before 
 the crooked can be made straight, or they twain truly have an 
 enduring kinship, friendship, marriage. 
 
 You cannot mix oil and water : No ! yes ! — if we put a lit- 
 tle lime with them we can, but not without. Henry and Sarah 
 call themselves married. But are they really so, seeing she frets 
 under the yoke ; and he sighs for liberty — to make another mis- 
 take ! They do not fuse ! the}' are oil and water. Let them 
 add a little mental and moral lime, in the shape of forbearance, 
 change of habits, conduct, manner and demonstrative affection, — 
 try, — and they maj^ soon become a Kalsomate of wedlock ; 
 or a Henriade of Sarah ! But to do so successfully, both must 
 take good care to avoid vampirism, and to be physically, 
 morally, and above all thoughtfully, true to each other and 
 themselves, no matter how great the provocation to be other- 
 wise, or how strong the temptation to go astray ; for if either 
 mingles with a third, they but add a new element of bitterness 
 to the cream of existence, out of which the butter of happiness 
 
292 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 will not come, for the simple reason that it takes two to make 
 one in genuine marriage. 
 
 At present things are badly mixed up in this conglomerate 
 of savagerj', barbarism, civilization, and the compound social 
 hash resulting from the combination of them all, not as separate 
 and distinct grades only, but, nine times in ten, mixed up in the 
 same individual ; — for how very often dowe see men and wom- 
 en too, whose intellects and conduct are perfectly civilized ; 
 whose religious nature is spasmodically intense and devotional ; 
 whose temper is savage, and, when fully up, extremely diabol- 
 ical ; and whose untrained sensual passions are barbarous, 
 judging from what their private conduct is, and the sad story 
 their faces tell, — stories sadly, mournfully echoed by the ap- 
 pearance of their wives and children. It is an old saw that if 
 you want to know what a carpenter is, look at his chips. Well, 
 if you want to know what a man is, look at his wife, and if you 
 want to know what both combined are, just observe their chil- 
 dren ; for God writes the whole story ofr their private lives on 
 and in the bodies, and minds, and habits, and morals of the off- 
 spring He hath given them. Such a book never, never, tells a 
 lie! 
 
 Iu accordance with the general mixedness, the most infernal 
 scamps get the best and noblest women as wives — only to 
 gradually kill them and send their sweet souls to heaven across 
 lots, and long before their time ! while the very best men living, 
 somehow or other, manage to get yoked to a mighty long-lived, 
 vinegar-visaged, growling, grumbling, most provokingest, gad- 
 aboutest, east-windiest, cai*eless grade of women, everyone of 
 whom are meaner than git, and wear their victims — four 01 
 five of them — to shreds and early graves. Yet so it is. 
 
 Few men, or women either, are aware of the weight of immor- 
 tality resting on them ; nor realize that this life is but the A B 
 C of an immensely broadened existence beyond this fleeting 
 scum of years, floating on the breast of the bottomless, sideless 
 ocean of eternity. If they did, they would think twice before 
 making marital choices, — a thing which, if well made, allies 
 both souls to the immortal Gods, anchors their hopes in the 
 
WOMAN) LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 293 
 
 heart of Deity ; brings joy to their spirits, health and long life 
 to their bodies, and exalts their destinies after death ; but 
 which, if illy made, lands them in the dismal swamps of long- 
 spun misery ; darkens their prospects ; ruins their health ; 
 peoples the world with ruffians ; elevates the bad ; depresses 
 the good ; scatters madness broadcast on every side ; eclipses 
 the sun of human happiness ; shuts out the glowing splendors 
 of religion ; belittles, ruins their natures ; dwarfs their souls ; 
 poisons their lives, and renders life a perpetual torment, immor- 
 tality a doubtful thing ; and utter annihilation as a means of 
 escape, a thing to be most ardently desired ; for, as marriage 
 now is, the appropriate inscription above the altars might 
 well be 
 
 "^fcanticm p?ope, all %z fofjo enter ijere," 
 
 Nature evidently intended that every wedded pair should be 
 a unit ; but, in these da3 r s, one would conclude they were at 
 least half-a-dozen, with a tomcat snare-drum and cymbals 
 thrown in, judging from the almost incessant wrangles, tangles, 
 jangles, mutual fangles, and not infrequent bodily mangles, 
 too, which illustrate the sublime relation. 
 
 All this comes from the get-married-in-a-hurry custom of the 
 country, and when each really knows as much about the other, 
 as they do of the man in the moon, or of the hero who extended 
 his hand till it contacted the occiput of Mr. William Patterson. 
 Said a late writer : — 
 
 " The love of a boy differs from that of a man in this : it is the wanton 
 enjoyment of a present imperious feeling, from which all serious consid- 
 eration of the future is excluded. It is mere blind activity of newly 
 awakened emotions. Hence the rashness of early loves. The boy wants 
 to love ; almost any woman will suffice. Hence he is violent, capricious, 
 inconstant, because he only seeks an excitement; he tries his young 
 wings. The tender feeling of protection, which enters so largely into the 
 love of the man ; the serious thoughts of the duties he owes to the girl who 
 gives up her life to him, and to the children she may bear him, — these, 
 and the thousand minute, but powerful influences which affect the man, 
 are unknown to the boy." 
 
294 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 Another, playing in the same strain, remarks : — 
 
 " A young man meets a pretty face in a ball-room, falls in love with it, 
 courts it, marries it, goes to house-keeping with it, and boasts of having a 
 home and a wife to grace it. The chances are, nine to ten, that he has 
 neither. He has been ' taken in and done for 2 ' Her pretty face gets to 
 be an old story, or becomes faded, or freckled, or fretted ; and as the face 
 was all he wanted, all he paid attention to, all he sat up with, all he bar- 
 gained for, all he swore to love, honor, and protect, he gets sick of his 
 trade, knows of a dozen faces he likes better, gives up staying at home 
 evenings, consoles himself with cigars, oysters, and politics, and looks 
 upon his home as a very indifferent boarding-house. 
 
 " A family of children grows up about him ; but neither he nor his 
 1 face ' knows anything about training them, so they come up helter-skel- 
 ter; made toys of when babies, dolls when boys and girls, drudges when 
 men and women ; and so passes year after year, and not one quiet, happy, 
 homely hour known throughout the whole household. 
 
 " Another young man becomes enamored of a ' fortune.' He waits upon 
 it to parties, dances the polka with it, exchanges hillet-doux with it, pops 
 the question to it, gets accepted by it, takes it to the parson, weds it, calls 
 it ' wife,' carries it home, sets up an establishment with it, introduces it to 
 his friends, and says he, too, is married and has got a home. It is false. 
 He is not married ; he has no home. And he soon finds it out. He is in 
 the wrong box ; but it is too late to get out of it ; he might as well hope to 
 get out of his coffin. His friends congratulate him, and he has to grin and 
 bear it. They praise the house, the furniture, the cradle, the new Bible, 
 and bid the ' fortune,' and he who husbands it, good-morning. As if he 
 had known a good-morning since he and that gilded fortune were declared 
 to be one. 
 
 " Take another case. A young woman is smitten with a pair of whis- 
 kers. Curled hair never before had such charms. She sets her cap for 
 them ; they take. The delighted whiskers make an offer, proffering them- 
 selves both in exchange for one heart. My dear miss is overcome with 
 magnanimity, closes the bargain, carries home the prize, shows it to pa 
 and ma, calls herself engaged to it, thinks there never was such a pair of 
 whiskers before, and in a few weeks they are married. Married! Yes, 
 the world calls it so, and so we will. What is the result? A short honey- 
 moon, and then the discovery that they are as unlike as chalk and cheese, 
 and not to be made one, though all the priests in Christendom pronounced 
 them so." 
 
 And still another, singing to the same tune : — 
 
 "The banes of domestic life are littleness, falsity, vulgarity, harshness, 
 scolding, vociferation, an incessant issuing of superfluous prohibition* 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 295 
 
 and orders, which are regarded as impertinent interferences with the gen- 
 eral liberty and repose, and are provocative of rankling or exploding re- 
 sentments. The blessed antidotes that sweeten and enrich domestic life 
 are refinement, high aims, great interests, soft voices, quiet and gentle 
 manners, magnanimous tempers, forbearance from all unnecessary com- 
 mands or dictation, and generous allowances of mutual freedom. Love 
 makes obedience lighter than liberty. Man wears a noble allegiance — 
 not as a collar, but as a garland. The Graces are never so lovely as when 
 seen waiting on the Virtues ; and where they thus dweli together they 
 make a heavenly home." 
 
 And Curtis, with what an ocean of truth : — 
 
 " I think of many and many a sad-eyed woman I have known in solitary 
 country homes who seemed never to have smiled, who struggled with hard 
 hands through the melting heat and pinching cold, to hold back poverty 
 and want that hovered like wolves about an ever-increasing flock of 
 children. How it was scour in the morning, and scrub at night and scold 
 all day long ! How care blurred the window like a cloud, hiding the 
 lovely landscape ! How anxiety snarled at her heels, dogging her like a 
 cur ! How little she knew or cared that bobolinks, drunk with blind idle- 
 ness, tumbled and sang in the meadows below, that the earth was telling 
 the time of year with flowers, in the woods above ! As I think of these 
 things, of the solitary, incessant drudgery, of the taciturn husband coming 
 in heavy with sleep, — too weary to read, to talk, to think, — I do not won- 
 der that the mad-houses are so richly recruited from the farm-houses, as the 
 statistics show — that the farmer's daughters hang enchanted over stories 
 in the weekly paper of the handsome Edward Augustus, with white hands 
 and black eyes — nor that the farmer's son hears the city bells that long 
 ago rang to Whittington, 'Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of Lon- 
 don,' ringing to him as he pauses in the furrow, ' Turn again, ploughboy, 
 millionnaire, and merchant ! '" 
 
29G WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 "Thus sang a lover by the blue wave, 
 While the deep surges symphony gave ; 
 Woman's truth trusting I yielded all, 
 Giving up senses into her thrall ! 
 
 " Glass not so brittle, fleeting as mist, 
 False were the red lips mine fondly kissed ; 
 Cold as the marble over a grave, 
 Fickle as sunlight gilding the wave. 
 
 " Wandering ever, searching in vain, 
 Seeks betrayed lover ease for his pain." 
 
 Tue love of the modern girl of the period, trained and badly 
 educated as she is, as well as by the frightful examples set be- 
 fore her by her elders, — who ought to know better, — is a very 
 dangerous and uncertain thing to deal with, because so very 
 superficial, cranky, backboneless, mincing, unthinking, quasi- 
 sentimental, and rose-waterish. It amounts to but very little at 
 the best, won't do for a permanent investment, or to tie to, par- 
 ticularly if there's rough seas, financially, to be sailed over, or 
 a difficult road to travel. When such a girl marries, very often 
 her beautiful dream is broken, and her lily-like hopes crushed to 
 flinders and forever, within four-and-twenty hours after her 
 thoughtless " I will," at the altar. This comes from two causes, 
 one mental, the other wholly material, for that which such a 
 girl inspires is seldom profound or tender affection, but rather a 
 wild, imperious, passional ardor, falling before the storms of 
 which she is lost forever. Because there's no element of pity 
 in the love she gets, but rather the element of ferocity ; for ten 
 to one that the groom turns out to be not a man, but a " rumi- 
 nant quadruped of the genus capra," only that it goes on two 
 legs instead of four, chews tobacco instead of the cud, and 
 swallows his horns instead of wearing them. " Did you say 
 goat?" No; what made you guess so correctly ? 
 
 Such " marriages " and such results are fifty thousand-fold 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 297 
 
 every week in the whole blessed year. Heavens ! It makes 
 one angry and the blood to boil to think of the brutalisms per- 
 petrated in the name of sanctified wedlock. Sanctified? Not 
 much, in these days, wherein a forthcoming consummation of 
 that sort is heralded weeks beforehand, just as a butcher an- 
 nounces that on such or such a day, he intends to kill a fat pig, 
 or prize ox! And when the day arrives the pair are duly 
 paraded, and the groom shows off his bride's best points, as he 
 would his fast horse's, and he gives and receives sundry sly 
 pokes in the ribs, and looks knowing, and winks gravely at his 
 men, who wink back at him, and smile and smirk wisely, — as 
 the sacrifice — if it be such! — is being led to the "altar;" 
 after which they hold a reception for an hour or two, make 
 another parade, enter a coach, the driver of which well knows 
 41 what's up," and makes his horses go slowly so as to lengthen 
 out his delicious misery. Previous to this the best man has 
 engaged the " bridal chamber " on the steamboat ; and of course 
 all the officers, down to the scullion, and all the passengers too, 
 quickly learn " what's up." And by and by the twain go to 
 supper, — the tables near which they sit being crowded with 
 feasters on the viands — and the pair; and the bland gentle- 
 men from Africa vie with each other in handing nice things to 
 the couple, for they, too, take exquisite delight in knowing 
 1 what's up " also. And then, after they have retired to the 
 " bridal chamber," scores of curious people, arm in arm, wander 
 up and down the stately saloon, or linger near the charmed 
 door, still asking each other as before, what's up? Next day, 
 and for two weeks longer at the hotel, where there's another 
 " bridal chamber," the same morbid air prevails ; and then 
 they go back home to continue a life, which, beginning badly, 
 may, and probably will, end worse. All this sort of thing needs 
 changing, for it don't look well to see a man act in that style 
 toward the woman whom he claims to " love," and whom he 
 certainly ought, but, infamously, does not respect ! 
 
 Flavel, the philosophic, says : — 
 
 " The soul and body are as springs of two musical instru- 
 ments, set exactly at one height ; if one be touched the other 
 
298 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 trembles. They laugh and cry, are sick and well together. 
 Yet how few men think of that as they listen to the words 
 which consigns God's masterpiece to their keeping ! " — All that 
 Flavel says is triply true of the mystical thing called marriage, 
 — that strange dual unity through whose agency the overarch- 
 ing heavens are peopled with deathless souls. And yet how 
 many myriads rush foolishly into it, without a single sober 
 thought, as if it were but an evanescent dream, or a temporary 
 stay at the fountains of paradise ! 
 
 The institution is used for lowly ends, and only a small 
 minority strive to make it a haven of rest and peace and ever- 
 springing happiness, ever rising skyward under the divine 
 impulsion of purity and reason, those tidal waves of blessed- 
 ness ! 
 
 Married people generally are, after the first three months, 
 very slow in developing either the capacity of being pleased 
 with each other, or what each other does or says, or the deter- 
 mination to, come what may, look at the bright side, and make 
 the most of circumstances, whatever they may be. Were this 
 the common habit of life, there would be fewer rough knolls to 
 stumble over in the journey ; when years whitened their heads 
 both would hold fast and cherish what gladdened them in youth, 
 and the kindly feeling would grow stronger and more solid ; for 
 we all love with greater purity and steadier power, after the gusts 
 of passion have swept by us, than it was possible to before. 
 We are all born with a void in the heart, aching to be filled ; 
 and it never can be if our mates only notice our dark and weak 
 sides, find fault continually, and, noting all our failings, with 
 almost scientific precision and regularity, never give a word 
 of encouragement, hope or goodly cheer. 
 
 Habitual thoughtless carelessness of our conduct towards our 
 life-mates — wives especially — blunts every moral sense in 
 both. People have enough to contend with in the world, and 
 the natural worry incident to existence, without being com- 
 pelled to put up with wholly unreasonable whims, oddities and 
 foolish airs from those who ought to know better than to put 
 them on, and which ought to be laid aside forever. In the case 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 299 
 
 of wives it is doubly hard, because, in addition to their natural 
 weakness, the majority are extremely sensitive to climatic 
 changes, varying their health and moods just as the electrical 
 and other atmospheric mutations occur. If the east wind 
 blows, they are pale, shivery, querulous and oppressed. If the 
 north wind blows, they pick up muscular and nervous strength ; 
 but are less poetical and beautiful, complaisant and affectionate, 
 than when the west wind breathes upon the earth ; and even 
 when it does, it is in a less degree than when the sunny south 
 wafts its breath across the land. 
 
 A woman is a sensitive creature by reason of the mission 
 given her to fulfil ; and that mission itself exerts a tremendous 
 influence upon her both during and after its grand accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 Men ought to know that gestation and childbirth very often 
 generate mighty changes, both in a woman's nature and her 
 moods, — sometimes even a species of madness, insanity, un- 
 reasonableness of conduct and demeanor ; and it is very often 
 the ending of one mode of life, and the beginning of a new 
 one ; for it often happens that the reaction from a prior state 
 brings on a forgetfulness of past modes, moods, and phases of 
 life, and lays the broad foundations of an entirely new set of 
 experiences. 
 
 In these days of lightning life things are hastily done, and 
 bitterly regretted ; and many marriages are simply a contest 
 between a feminine soul and brute force, and brute force wins 
 the day in most cases, if we are to judge by the myriad green 
 grassy graves of wives prematurely dead and buried. But, 
 when wedlock comes to be what it ought to, and will, in time, 
 — a long time, — we shall see, let us hope and believe, a far 
 better state of things ; and such true and pure, healthful, well- 
 appointed, therefore happy marriages as shall make longing 
 hearts to shout for joy, and all the heavenly arches ring. 
 Therefore, let us hurry up the good time, and abolish forever 
 that bad state of things wherein husbands are lords paramount 
 and tyrants, and women bounden slaves. Already the good is 
 
300 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 making inroads on the ill ; and, while the skies grow gently 
 brighter, lo ! the hopeful bells are ringing ! 
 
 All hail that glad time wherein men will seek for wives, not 
 mere shows and beautiful dolls ; and wherein people shall 
 marry for love, not for weal or woe, as now ; for a great many 
 now wed for weal with a V and some crusts of bread, — the 
 whole proving rather hard feed to most who partake thereof; 
 for there's a heavy lot of woe, but very small rations of weal. 
 
 We are all here in the very early spring-time of existence, 
 although but comparatively few of us realize the fact, or that 
 pretty soon we shall reach a point whence exceedingly strange 
 and long journej's by immortal and disbodied express are before 
 us ; and, hence, that it won't do to clog the wheels in this early 
 stage of the infinite travel, which we all do, more or less, by not 
 taking care of ourselves and each other, and by wasting the oil 
 of life too soon. Why travel in the dark, when the sun shines 
 brightly to light us on our deathless way? 
 
 A man must be appreciated by the woman he husbands, else 
 life's a bitter failure to him, because nothing on earth is dearer 
 to a man, worn by the toil, and disheartened by the hypocrisy 
 of the world, than the deep and storm-proof friendship of a 
 dear, pure, good woman, and especially if that woman is his 
 wife. Such a friendship is a heaven upon earth, and one which 
 every man ought to strive to build up, and every wife extend. 
 
 Particularly is such a friendship needed by literary men, who, 
 to the world, are simply a sort of lions on exhibition. They 
 have many protestations of friendship, especially when sailing 
 on a smooth sea, with the wind abaft the beam ; but, when 
 storms begin to blow, Mister Friend very generally comes up 
 missing ; at the very critical moment when friendship counts 
 most, if it counts at all, as a general thing, protesting, urgent 
 friends are always friendly, excepting and nearly always, when 
 friends are mostly needed. 
 
 Only when we truly love can we be truly great. 
 
 Although the world denounces those who are strongly amor- 
 ous, yet to those very men and women is that identical world 
 indebted for the best thoughts ever current on its tides in pol- 
 
WOMAK, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 301 
 
 isbed lines or flowing verse. And may Heaven help him or her 
 who has not that appetite and power keenly set and strong ! 
 
 The trouble lies, not in its use, but in its perversion and 
 abuse. Correct these two, and this will be a glorious world to 
 live in, filled with glorious men and women, whose splendor 
 will be natural, not, as now, mainly dependent upon the dress- 
 maker's art, the druggist's wares, or the meretricious accom- 
 plishments at present in vogue ; but we shall see the sex in all 
 the superlative glories natural to her, but now buried too deep 
 for a general resurrection in these days. Man will vie with her, 
 too, in that better and more hopeful time ; for then, even in 
 New England, we should see full-browed, generous, portly men, 
 instead of the semi-opaque, slab-sided, lean, lank, long, and 
 hungry-looking, lucre-grasping set of apologies for men we 
 now encounter everywhere within her borders, — men who look 
 as if their parents had been casting up ledgers and daj'-books 
 during their generation and gestation ; and as if themselves 
 were desperately intent upon following in their footsteps for- 
 ever and forever more. God save us all from a heaven filled 
 with such saints as such sinners will undoubtedly make ! Spas- 
 modic, jerky, slab-sided saints, in a money-grasping, speculat- 
 ing paradise, from which may we all be safely delivered ! 
 
 There is not a spot on the broad, green earth where so many 
 infractions of the love laws, to the acre, or square yard, occur 
 as in New England ; while as for Boston it can, in that respect, 
 give Sodom and Gomorrah, ay, even Nero's Rome itself, or 
 Chicago either, large odds, go a great deal better, and call and 
 see the best of tbem, or the worst. The causes are elsewhere 
 stated. 
 
 He or she who is full of love is master of hearts, or mistress 
 of souls ; and their power over people is a proof direct that 
 love and it alone is the fountain of power, and the bread of 
 true life. 
 
 There is something awfully prophetic, and sublime beyond 
 degree, in real, pure, genuine love. It is the key which un- 
 locks all mystery. It is the golden hinge upon which swing the 
 massive gates of the vast eternity ! It is the verbum myrtficum, 
 
302 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 — the word of power, at sound of which all Heaven is wrapt in 
 silence, while myriad seraphs gather round to listen to the tran- 
 scendent story ! It is the king-motive in the breast of God, and 
 the prime motor of his vast universe ! Time, to love, is a fleet- 
 ing phantorama, a fleeting second, for the soul which really, truly 
 loves, dons wings wherewith it is enabled to sweep the plains of 
 immensity at a single stroke of its magic pinions, and at abound, 
 as it were, dares take its rightful stand hard by the throne of 
 omnipotent, eternal God ! 
 
 The use of love consists in increasing the sum total of human 
 happiness, through its several sacred rituals, when all things 
 indicate a fitness. Its abuse consists in over-tasking nature, 
 and forcing her generous energies. 
 
 Where amative love exists not, is very feeble or lost altogether, 
 discord and distraction enter the mansion, pitch affection, peace, 
 quiet, trust, genialty, out of the window, and introduce in their 
 places envy, malice, distrust, jealousy, deceit, bicker, and con- 
 tention, a hell-brood of seven as infernal spirits as ever left the 
 pit for a gala-day on earth. 
 
 When common sense, amatively, restores the function, the 
 way these harpies disperse is quite surprising. Love, like mu- 
 sic has many degrees, notes, and octaves. Illustration : There 
 lies the violin, whereon the writer sometimes wakes the sympho- 
 nies after his dull fashion. See, here come three of his friends. 
 "Good-morning, doctor!" "Good morning, gentlemen!" 
 " Ah ! a fiddle, I see ! " says the first — the stupid ! — to call the 
 darling Katarina a fiddle — the sweet Cremona, worth more 
 golden ounces than he is worth farthings — the wretch ! But 
 he sticks to it that she is a fiddle. He takes her up ; plays 
 what might, at a pinch, pass for a tune — such airs ! fatal to all 
 bovine females ! " Stop ! stop ! for God's sake ! " her owner 
 cries. He looks astonished and obeys. And now the next man 
 tries her quality. What a difference ! He plays, and his music 
 has collected a great throng under the office window, every one 
 of whom feels the notes go into their ears and come out at their 
 heels, a dance-compelling whirl of good feeling. He ceases to 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 303 
 
 play — on Katarina — and the crowd ; whereupon the third man 
 takes her up, — the darling with a pine belly! This one plays 
 no stated tune, but just expresses his soul in random phrases ; 
 but somehow or other his tones enter the souls of his auditors. 
 His every note is a shaft of feeling ; under its spell each hearer 
 becomes tame, holy, patriotic, religious and subdued. Full many 
 a tear rolls down furrowed cheeks ; many a heart palpitates be- 
 neath the emotional tide ; and every one feels that he is born to 
 a high and magnificent destiny ! 
 
 Said an acquaintance, in connection with this thought, " The 
 human soul, eveiywhere, in the humblest walks of life, as well 
 as in the highest society of the wealthy, has the longing for the 
 emotional, — what will inspire it; raise it above its common self. 
 Some find it in the divine tones of the orator, the electricity 
 powerfully surging from the pages of a good book ; the spell 
 that flows in the undulating harmony of lyre and voice. Others 
 seek and find it in various phases and forms of holy religion ; 
 but alas ! too many seek it from that attractive but damning 
 source, the intoxicating cup ; — under the power of which the 
 mind soars at the expense and destruction of the body. Hence 
 the man whose circumstances prevent his enjoying the intoxica- 
 tions of taste and art, if impelled by that longing common to 
 true manhood, rushes into excesses to satisfy this craving, does 
 but assert his natural equality to the purest man that a common 
 Father ever created. The duty of society ' in the good time 
 coming,' is to place within the reach of all the means of enno- 
 bling and strengthening emotion or aesthetic intoxication, by 
 free music, free libraries, free art galleries, free fountains and 
 free baths," and everything except free love, adds Casca Llanna. 
 Every one of us is like that violin, but many of us are treated 
 like fiddles \>y those who ought to know better. No tongue can 
 tell, no pen describe, but souls and hearts only, can feel, the in- 
 tense music latent in us, and awaiting to be evoked and called 
 out by the right handling of the strings and bow ! 
 
 As times go, but few experience as deep joy thrills after, as 
 before, the first three months of wedded life ; except after one 
 party returns from a long journey. Then, love for a time is 
 
304 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 tempestuous, but soon subsides into a dreadful calm, — till the 
 next return from another journey ! — a calm of the exceedingly 
 dead sort too. Now there is no good reason why married love 
 should not increase from its morning until death seals it. Love 
 generally, like a good fish-pole, grows small by degrees, and 
 horribly less. This follows because married people wear them- 
 selves out too soon, and fret their very lives away, and for this 
 reason saloons and brothels flourish like green bay-trees. Far 
 too many of us — 
 
 " Give every appetite too loose a rein, 
 Push every pleasure to the verge of pain," 
 
 and suffer the inevitable consequences. 
 
 Pleasure owes its greatest zest to anticipation. The promise 
 of a shilling fiddle will keep a school-boy in happiness for 
 months. The fun connected with its enjoyment will expire in 
 an hour. What is true of school-boys is equally true of men. 
 All they differ in is the price of their fiddles. But married life 
 is not a fiddle ; it is a magnificent Cremona violin. By the 
 musical love-principles the world is moved to good or ill. All 
 virtuous people may not be good ; but all good people are 
 virtuous. 
 
 The good man or woman may be weak — tempted till they 
 lose self-command. "When tempted it is the best policy to run, 
 run as if the devil was after you — for he is! Many a well- 
 meaner has played with the amative fiend till they have got 
 badly scorched, and then, " Who'd a' thought it?" 
 
 A man may do everything but steal, and yet the world will 
 say he is virtuous. A woman does as she pleases once, and the 
 world calls her desperately depraved. She is bad, doubtless, 
 but then she is judged by a world quite discriminating, not at 
 all pharisaical, hypocritical, unjust, dodging, — of course 
 not ! O world ! O monstrous world ! We thank thee for the 
 use of thy spectacles, by means of which we are enabled 
 to discover that virtue is physical, that it dwells not in the soul, 
 but consists wholly in a cartilage, which, when destroyed, the 
 soul is past redemption, and all the virtues are non est! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 305 
 
 Love is the primum mobile of human life. Blot it out from 
 human hopes, and but little is left to struggle for. Not one 
 man in ten thousand but would rather die than lose his man- 
 hood — woman the same. What will a man not dare, inspired 
 by love? What will not a woman go through, — childbirth for 
 instance, — for the man she loves? but the worst of it is, that 
 many go through it for the men they hate — most confoundedly 
 too! 
 
 Love is the king passion — over-riding all others — wealth, 
 fame, position — all else. It rules alike Cuffee or Carlyle. 
 Most people live for, struggle and fight for, and untold millions 
 have died for it ; while festering hecatombs of human bodies 
 proclaim its resistless might. In face of this fact, what is the 
 use of whining because we cannot prevent infractions of our 
 laws wherewith we seek to hedge in the morals of the people ? 
 It were far better to appoint competent persons in our schools, 
 whose office should be to enlighten children on the subject, so 
 that they shall grow up masters of their passions, instead of 
 being mastered by them. Nor would it be a bad idea to have 
 fewer vindictive punishments for sins whereof fathers and 
 mothers are quite as responsible as the sons and daughters who 
 err and are punished therefor. 
 
 Amativeness wields a greater power as a motor than anything 
 else on earth. Friendship, hatred, wealth, fame, place, position 
 and ambition, have been sacrificed for its sake, more times than 
 there are stars in the sky. Many a one has fallen before its 
 gigantic strength, even in the knowledge that to do so was to risk 
 imprisonment, and even death itself. In view of this resistless 
 fact, the question before the world to-day is, not how to stop 
 this forceful engine, or cripple its energies, but how best to 
 render it orderly, to place it on the right track, and cause it to 
 move along unpervertedly ; for there can be no question that 
 it, when thus reined, is the source and spring of the most ex- 
 quisite joy earth can bestow ; and if we still be human after 
 death, it, in a regenerated form and sense, will doubtless con- 
 stitute one of our sources of bliss on the other side of time. 
 
 How any sane man can endure, much less procure, the services 
 
306 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 of a professional wanton, is inexplicable. Such desecrations 
 of the human being is the evil of evils of the world to-day ; and 
 that the consequences are to be reaped on both shores of eter- 
 nity is as true as that God guides the suns in their course 
 through space. Man will fearlessly brave death in any form, 
 reap garlands of fame on gory fields, and shrink never an inch 
 before the storm of lead and iron hail, the clash of murder- 
 forged steel, the thundering of martial squadrons ; he may face 
 all this unmoved, and yet put that man before a pretty woman, 
 and were he forty thousand Caesars condensed into one, she 
 will storm his strongholds, dismantle his batteries, route his 
 garrisons, and make him strike his colors before he can fairly 
 say " Jack Robinson." 
 
 All men do not believe in a God, but do believe strongly in 
 woman. All men are not interested in politics or religion, but 
 all are interested in woman. Earthquakes, the roar of battle, 
 the tempest's howl, have not terrors equal to unmanning him ; 
 he may flinch and tremble, but only to stand firmer afterwards ; 
 but a woman will in ten minutes reduce him to the consistency 
 of cup-custard ! Ambition and glory may beckon him, and he 
 may prove invulnerable, but let one of those women, with a 
 devil in her eye, once get fairly alongside of him, and lo ! she 
 twists our gentleman around her finger, "just as easy ! " foi 
 before the blandishments of a shrewd woman, or one who has 
 tapped the fountains of his love, the strong. man becomes as 
 clay in the potter's hand ; as many a Delilah or Millwood has 
 proven to the cost of many a Samson or Barnwell ere now. 
 Quite as many men, married and single, are bilked, deceived, 
 ruined by the women, as the reverse of the case ; only the world 
 hears of the latter, but no newspaper tells of breaking hearts 
 under male breast-bones. While nearly every one listens to 
 and believes the story of a woman, even the most perjured 
 harlot, no one pities the male victim of a female victor ; and 
 this arises from the self-same morbid amativeness now desolat- 
 ing the world in so many other respects. 
 
 Some one spoke of woman being the " weaker " vessel. " Call 
 a woman weak," said another ; " By the Eternal ! she is stronger 
 

 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 307 
 
 than man any clay ! She moves the world, pulls the wires, and 
 makes everything dance and wriggle as she pleases ! She has 
 done it from the first day, for Adam successfully resisted apples, 
 hunger and the devil ; but no sooner did Eve join the enemy 
 than he knocked under." And there is a great deal of homely 
 truth in the observation. 
 
 Once there was a pilgrim who wrote a letter to the sage Benred- 
 din Eii, a philosopher of the rare school of Nommoc Esnes, 
 desiring certain information. In reply, the sage wrote back the 
 following letter, dated from the Valley of Content : Season of 
 Flowers : — 
 
 Pilgrim : — Thy letter is before me. I salute thee. It is 
 difficult to convey in thy cold language of the West the flow- 
 ing maxims of the Orient ; yet, as our motto is " Try," I shall 
 essay the task. 
 
 First. The wife. She ought to be sacred in thine eyes while 
 she giveth suck. This caution neglected once is bad ; if often, 
 then thou, thy babe, and its mother will not smack the lips of 
 health or gladness ; for if the flame of her love for thee burneth 
 fiercely even once, the love, — physical love, for it waxeth dull 
 and dieth out ; and thou and she will, for thy folly, train up a 
 weakly, but precocious babe, and thou wilt hug the phantom of 
 remorse and ride the nightmare of heavy sorrow. 
 
 Second. But be thou true and just, and together thou mayest 
 ascend the hills of excellent health, and drink the sherbet of 
 wonderful joy. 
 
 Third. The true khanum (wife) despiseth perfumes, save 
 those which water giveth, or those slight odors wherewith she 
 sprinkleth her garments ; and then she useth the waters of Gul 
 (roses). It is the khanum herself, and not the chemist's prod- 
 uct, that smelleth grateful to the lord of the household ! Art 
 perfumes destroy the far sweeter airs breathed out from every 
 pore of the woman whose soul is full of love, and none but a 
 Jaflaf (cyprian) needeth perfumes ; and only an Abu Jakel 
 (father of asses) can endure either ! 
 
 Fourth. Allah be praised ! fresh air beautifieth the woman, 
 and whiteneth the face of her virtues : it adorneth the neck of 
 
308 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 accomplishment, and causeth the garden of her mind to bring 
 forth the fruitage of delight ; and if she and her husband shall 
 daily and freely beat the air (gymnastics — calisthenics) by the 
 light of the sun's first rays, they shall find that Nature hath 
 spread for them the table-cloth of hospitality, and so whetted 
 the edge of chaste desire, that it shall never more be dulled 
 upon the sides of disappointment ; for the fresh air imparteth 
 more than the wealth of Hatam Tai ; it maketh the household 
 bask beneath the rosy canopy of Contentment, situated in the 
 vale of Domestic Bliss, overshadowed by the vine of Satisfac- 
 tion, where their shadows will ever increase, and lips of honeyed 
 love distil forever the drops of purple music, the ravishing mel- 
 ody of tinkling heai-ts ! Therefore let the Fresh Air bring thee 
 all his blessings ; let him enter thy chamber by night ; and ad- 
 mit his brother, Sunshine, by day ; for these two carry healing 
 on their wings ; and health bringeth Beauty, and she beareth to 
 thee flowers from her gardens, showeth Affection the way to thy 
 house, and she will lead thee into the arena of Goodness, and 
 Goodness is the father of Wisdom, who bringeth Long Life, and 
 long life beareth the keys of Paradise ! All these blessed won- 
 ders dwell upon the sunbeam, and dance upon the atoms of the 
 air! 
 
 Fifth. A goose is the mother of fools ; alive, she carrieth 
 great loads of feathers and clown, whereof other fools rob her 
 and fashion thereof strange cushions of luxury and Death ! 
 The wise men love to husband strength, but fools delight to waste 
 it. The former sleepeth on the hair of the stalwart ox, or on 
 the bed of chips or straw ; but fools who listen to the counsels 
 of feathers — " Ease ! ease ! " instead of Health ! Health ! — will 
 presently chew the cud of shame and weakness beneath the veil 
 of their own folly ; and such shall drink patience from a bowl ; 
 and it shall be sweetened with grief before they learn to wash 
 in the waters of "Wisdom, to cleanse themselves from the mire 
 contracted in their wanderings through the swamps of Pollution, 
 
 ONE OF WHICH EXISTS IN EVERY COUCH OF FEATHERS ! 
 
 6th. If the legs of thy couch resteth upon lumps of wax, or 
 squares of glass (insulated), thou wilt be protected from the 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 309 
 
 Skeevem Pah (nightly flows of malarious electricity), nor 
 can the shivering genii (ague) ever reach thee, especially if 
 thy couch standeth, while thou sleepest, away from the wall or 
 in the centre of thy chamber. 
 
 7th. husband ! In all thy wooing, never forget that thy 
 mother was a woman ! See to it well, therefore, that thou ever 
 respectest the womanly feelings and modesty of thy wife ; and 
 that no act, tvord, or look of thine has the least tendency 
 towards breaking down that delicate barrier of coj^ness, pro- 
 priety, and reserve, which is the brightest charm of woman, — 
 without which she may be liked, but can never be loved, honored, 
 or respected, and which, like an eggshell, is very brittle, and, 
 when once broken, can never be repaired. 
 
 8th. The wise husband delighteth in self-control, for his 
 wife's sweet sake ; he forbeareth often, nor presseth his suit in 
 seasons of rejection, for he loveth to prove himself as kind, as 
 manly. 
 
 9th. No true son of Allah will perform any solemn business, 
 or that may result in serious consequences, when weary, or 
 drunken, or when he does not fully realize the situation in all 
 its multitudinous bearings ; or when angry with himself or 
 another ; nor when he mistakes whim for power. He hath no 
 right to do anj'thing which may unfavorably affect the health or 
 fate of others ; nor to take any action which may, except the 
 sea of his nature be steadfast and calm, and his affections and 
 love are at high tide. If he remembereth this he putteth out 
 the fires of Jehanum, kindleth the torch of paradise, and never 
 sitteth in the shadow of shame, or in the darkling valley of 
 humiliation. 
 
 10th. No wise gardener shaketh his pomegranate or apple 
 tree while the fruit is forming. Who can eat green grapes and 
 not suffer for his folly? 
 
 11th. The flower of thy garden, O husband, may not be so 
 fair as that of thy neighbor, but to thee it is, or, at least, 
 should be, infinitely more dear and precious ; therefore, watch 
 over it, tend it, nurture, cheiish, cling to, guard, protect, love, 
 and respect it ; and when it sees all thy care, and feels thy 
 
310 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 tenderness, truth, and goodness, it will upraise its head in 
 praise, thankfulness, and love to thee ; and the exhalations of 
 its sweet soul will be grateful perfume to the nostrils of thy 
 spirit. That flower is thy ivife I 
 
 A wife ! whoever hath a wife 
 
 Is doubly armed 'gainst all the ills of life. 
 
 The sky hath but one sun, the earth but one great glory, and 
 that is — woman ! Life, light and prosperity, joy, mirth and 
 gladness attend them both. The one warmeth man's heart by 
 day ; the other enrieheth his soul at eventide, and each exhaleth 
 perfumes sweeter than all the roses of Gulistan ! The Hakim 
 may say " My physic is good," but what herb, O man, is equal 
 to the touch of woman's hand ? What tonic equal to a single 
 glance, sent love-beaming from her eye, to dance the dance of 
 renovation in the parlors of man's soul ? What is spikenard ? 
 What is manna? What is irakwek even, or all the drugs of 
 Ind, compared to the twinkle of a woman's eyelash, when her 
 soul is ripe with love? 
 
 Whoso hath a loving wife under his roof-tree is richer than a 
 king ! What are the smiles of courtesans ? what the embraces 
 and pressure of a wanton's arms compared to the noble loving 
 of an honest wife ? The husband of such an one hath a specific 
 for every ill. Shut up your Galen, burn your Hippocrates, put 
 all physicians in a corner, for the queen of them all is there, 
 and lurks in every loving woman's smile. Who will take cas- 
 sia, when an eye is to be had? or writhe under a blister when a 
 loving wife's smile can heal him ? Every true man cherishes, 
 respects and adores thee, O woman of the loving soul, and the 
 prayer of every honest heart is that Allah will forgive thee all 
 thy faults, and take thee to himself at kist, when all thy labor 
 and thy cares are done. Heaven bless thee, O woman, increase 
 all thy joys, strengthen thee in all thy perils, and may thy shadow 
 never be less ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 311 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A cunning woman who has a man's affections, holds the long 
 arm of the most powerful lever in existence ; for through his love 
 — a love not of the Miss Nancy, platonic, rosewater sort, but one 
 based on the solid realities of physical form, beauty, and adapted- 
 ness, — the strong man falls as powerless as an infant, and she 
 can, if she wills it, triumphantly lead him whithersoever she 
 pleases — elevate him to the highest heaven, or plunge him head- 
 long into the deepest hell ! Such has been the history of life since 
 man fell in love with the first woman, and tumbled out of Eden 
 in consequence ; and the likelihood is, that such will be the case 
 some time longer. 'Tis said that : — 
 
 11 Man's love is of man's life a part, 
 'Tis woman's whole existence." 
 
 And just as long as her physical and other charms are capa- 
 ble of raising a tumult beneath his vest, will he be at once her 
 victim, dupe, and master, be she good or evil. No matter how 
 vast his genius, or great his talent, no matter how little in soul, 
 ambition or mental ability she may be, commencing at the low- 
 est or saloonatic grade, or the Flora la Blonde — the intensest 
 vampire species, she will, if she once gets hold of his affec- 
 tions, toss him about as hurricanes toss trusses of hay and forest 
 leaves ; and, unless God Almighty himself intervenes to save 
 him, will ruin and demolish, blast and demoralize him with an 
 ease and devilish facility absolutely astounding, except to those 
 who realize and know the fact that the greater a man is in 
 brain and heart, the weaker he is on affectional points ; for the 
 most colossal mind on earth is sure to have a very soft spot in 
 his heart, and a far softer one just under the crown of his 
 hat, so far as the wearers of jupons are concerned. So genius, 
 genius, look out for the Beats ! 
 
 But that class and the designing one aside, the writer, basing 
 his opinion upon large observation, thinks — and begs pardon 
 for daring to disagree with some people — that almost any wo- 
 
312 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 man will do well if well done by ; and men the same. There 
 are exceptions — but rare ones. Love, physical and senti- 
 mental alike, has, as hath everything else, its regular tides, — 
 tides high, low, spring, and neap, just like the air, sea and 
 rivers. Those couples whose feelings toward each other are 
 always on a dead level, like a prairie, or a still lake, are never 
 the happiest. In fact, their love is stagnant ; they don't realize 
 what the word really means. 
 
 The man who is all S} r mpathy, who feels no antipathies or re- 
 pulsions ; never gets angry or " obstropulous, " to use an inele- 
 gant Americanism, who never feels indignant, passional, ex- 
 cited, — don't amount to much, and never makes a mark on the 
 people or the times. The woman who either feels too much or 
 too little, seldom makes an enduring wife. Unless love, like a 
 landscape, has its rises and falls ; like the sea its ebbs and flows ; 
 unless it has its petty estrangements, coolnesses, and delicious 
 makings-up, it, like the pond behind the barn, is apt to grow 
 stagnant, and produce unsightly and unsavory things ; and at 
 best it is but a milk-and-water affair, having little of the honey 
 of life to flavor it. 
 
 But whoever takes pains to nourish and cherish a tiff, or spat , 
 and lays their memory by, to be recalled as opportunity offers, 
 and to be, like a bitter cud, chewed at leisure and perpetually 
 digested, yet never gotten rid of, has not yet learned the neces- 
 sary lesson of forget and forgive ; and is, to say the least, not 
 quite up to the Solomonic standard of wisdom. 
 
 How suicidal is the general habit of having a pet grievance 
 all the time at hand ! Not until it falls into desuetude will 
 pristine Eden be restored, or summer last the year around. 
 
 Some one writing on the general subject of this branch of our 
 topic has said, and well said too, that : — 
 
 "The first duty of husbands is to sympathize with their wives in all their 
 cares and labors. Men are apt to forget, in the perplexities and annoy- 
 ances of business, that home cares are also annoying and try the patience 
 and the strength of their wives. They come home expecting sympathy and 
 attention, but are too apt to have none to give. A single kindly word or look, 
 that tells his thought of her and her troubles, would lift half the weight of 
 
JTOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 313 
 
 care from her heart. Secondly, husbands should make confidants of their 
 wives, consulting them ou their plans and prospects, and especially on their 
 troubles and embarrassments. A -woman's intuition is often better than all 
 his wisdom and shrewdness, and her ready sympathy and interest is a pow- 
 erful aid for his efforts, for their mutual welfare. Thirdly, men should 
 show their love for their wives in constant attentions, in their manner of 
 treating them, and in the thousand and one trifling offices of affection 
 which may be hardly noticeable, but which make all the difference between 
 a life of sad and undefined longing, and cheery, happy existence. Above 
 all, men should beware of treating their wives with rudeness and incivility, 
 as if they were the only persons not entitled to their consideration and re- 
 spect. They should think of their sensitive feelings and their need of 
 sympathy, and never let the fire of love go out or cease to show that the 
 flame is burning with unabated fervor." 
 
 And another one, in the " Mother's Journal" understood this 
 point perfectly : — 
 
 " Only let a woman be sure that she is precious to her husband — not 
 useful, not valuable, not convenient simply, but lovely and beloved ; let 
 her be the recipient of his polite and hearty attention ; let her feel that her 
 care and love are noticed, appreciated and returned ; let her opinion be 
 asked, her approval sought, and her judgment respected in matters of 
 ■which she is cognizant ; in short, let her only be loved, honored, cherished, 
 in fulfilment of the marriage vow — and she will be to her husband, her 
 children, and society, a well-spring of pleasure. She will bear pain and 
 toil and anxiety — for her husband's love is to her a tower and fortress. 
 Shielded and sheltered therein, adversity will have lost its sting. She may 
 suffer, but sympathy will dull the edge of sorrow. A house with love in 
 it — and by love I mean love expressed in words and looks and deeds (for 
 I have not one spark of faith in love that never crops out) — is to a house 
 without love as a person to a machine ; one is life, the other is a mechan- 
 ism. The unloved woman may have bread just as light, a house just as tidy as 
 the other ; but the latter has a spring of beauty about her, a joyousness, an 
 aggressive, penetrating, and pervading brightness, to which the former is 
 a stranger. The deep happiness in her heart shines out in her face. It 
 gleams over it. It is fair and graceful, and warm and welcoming with her 
 oresence ; she is full of devices and plots and sweet surprises for her hus- 
 band and family. She has never done with the romance and poetry of 
 life. She, herself, is a lyric poem, setting herself to all pure and gracious 
 melodies. Humble household ways and duties have for her a golden sig- 
 nificance. The prize makes her calling high, and the end sanctifies the 
 means. Love is Heaven, and Heaven is love." 
 
514 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARKIAGE. 
 
 While the author of this book has said much against the 
 abuse of passion, he finds it is necessary to caution against the 
 opposite extreme ; for a wedded celibate is a disgrace to the 
 human species. Even Dante, the poet, realized this truth in his 
 early day, for he saj's in Canto XI. of " Paradise," if mistake 
 be not made : — 
 
 " Incontinence the least offends God, and least guilt incurs." 
 
 Few men, as said before, and here repeated, are capable of 
 really loving, even though they may admire, a strong-minded 
 woman, — a she man ; — nor are such capable of inspiring the 
 divine passion. A sensible man couldn't rest well beside a 
 " scientific nomenclature " or " technichological proposition." 
 One prefers a romance or a song ; nor are men over-fond of 
 physical, mental or moral angularities. Such highly " gifted " 
 are altogether too sharp for comfort, and their mental qualifica- 
 tions are too great to be compatible with either husband or baby 
 culture, or anything like connubial felicity ; and while their 
 " a prioris " and " fortioris " all do very well on the platform, 
 real men, when off it and at home, prefer to dispense therewith, 
 and vote most decidedly for peace and union, so far as home 
 comforts are concerned. 
 
 The poet Rosenberg, in " The Ark," has finely expressed 
 some thoughts which it were well each of us learned and profited 
 by:- 
 
 " Saltly surging round my soul, 
 
 Swart and deep the waters roll ; 
 
 No horizon can I see 
 
 Where a place of rest may be. 
 
 Out, young passion, out and try 
 
 The pathless wave and boundless sky ; 
 Passion's wing is loosed in rain — 
 
 Passion finds nor pause nor rest — 
 
 With ruffled wing and rumpled breast, 
 Passion cometh home again. 
 
 " Out, ambition ! stronger still ; 
 Great of heart, and large of will ; 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 315 
 
 Vulture wing and eagle eye — 
 Sweep the wave and search the sky, 
 Spite of storm and battling wind, 
 Place and spot of rest to find. 
 
 But in vain, ambition's flight 
 Sweeps the wave for place of rest ; 
 Home it comes, with bleeding breast, 
 
 Shattered wing and failing might. 
 
 " Dear home-dweller ! gentle love ! 
 Timid plume and eye of dove ! 
 Thine at length the task to try ; 
 Out, and search the wave and sky. 
 Nor flies the trembling one in vain, 
 Back it comes in joy again. 
 
 Love brings home the olive-leaf; 
 Love has found the place of rest; 
 Woman's true and tender breast, 
 Only home in every grief." 
 
 Wonder how it is in the majority of New England homes ! 
 
 Heaven save us all from the tender mercies of The Friend 
 of the Family, who eats our bread beneath our roof-tree, and 
 mangles our characters when digesting it elsewhere ! 
 
 How dreadfully scandal-mongers squirm when their own 
 tables are turned upon them, and themselves are made to feel 
 how sharper than a serpent's tooth is the viper-fang and lying 
 tongue of one who peddles slander ! 
 
 Reader, never go back on any one, just because they are 
 scandalized and talked against ; for the gabblers are ignorant 
 of the real character of those they traduce ; and it often turns 
 out that those who bear the worst name are white-robed angels 
 compared to their vituperators. "Who so great as Him of Naz- 
 areth? yet they hung him ! "Who so meek and lovely as His 
 best friend John? yet they martyred him! Indeed, to come 
 
 down to our own clays, who so virtuous as R s, the famous 
 
 Boston printer? yet they said his virtue was of a very leaky 
 character, — that meek and gentle lambkin of men ! No, no, 
 it won't do to measure a man by what They Say. 
 
316 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 Let us now turn our attention for a brief space to the consid- 
 eration of blonde women and their opposites, the vivacious 
 brunettes ; and to the compatibilities and temperaments best 
 suited to the general production of the greatest comparative 
 amount and degree of happiness in the married life of human 
 kind, so far, at least, as the offshoots of the Caucasian, Latin, 
 and Teutonic races, now forming the human conglomerate in- 
 habiting the soil of these United States and adjacent lands, are 
 concerned. 
 
 Under the head of the blonde is here intended to be included 
 all who are light, and some who are ruddy ; while under the 
 class brunette is included all those, without too much Negro 
 and Indian blood, who are dark or olive in complexion, and 
 whose hair and eyes correspond generally thereto. 
 
 And here the author mahes the astounding assertion, and defies 
 contradiction, that there is not a brunette on earth, never was, and 
 never ivill be, but in ivhose veins Black man's blood flows ! 
 Not a brunette living, dead, or to be, but at the head of whose 
 line stands one of the three dark races, Arab, Moor, Negro ; 
 more Arab than Moor, more Negro than either or both the 
 others combined. There, you brunettes, who hate the black 
 races, put that in your pipes and smoke it ! for it is true, no 
 matter how sick at the thought, or stomach, it may make you, 
 you are cousins to Pompey, not the emperor, but that genial 
 gentleman who, erewhile, hailed from 
 
 " Way down upon de Swanee riber, 
 Far, far away." 
 
 Read the extracts from Darwin, in this book, again, if you 
 want to see how the thing came to pass ; remember, too, that 
 genealogical lines elude us by their multitude and ramifications 
 after a few centuries ; and rest assured that somewhere in the 
 past, a black man grins triumphantly at every brunette, as he 
 says, " I's yer granfader, befo' de Lord ! " — " Look here," said 
 a gentleman, who heard the above read, "if that's a lie, it's the 
 king-pin of the species ! If it is a fact, why, it's a damned un- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 31 7 
 
 palatable one ! that's all ! " — " Well," was the response, " it is 
 a fact, and cannot be disproved." Your remark calls to mind 
 an illustrative little story. Listen : — 
 
 Scene I. — Planter's dining-room. Present : a table full of 
 guests, and an impudent, old, and stuttering negro to wait 
 upon them. Subject of conversation : Darwinism, and mother- 
 marking. Aristocratic lacly, with beautiful brunette daughter 
 upstairs, remarks that, " Mental states, at certain sacred sea- 
 sons, indubitably affect the unborn. Why, some months be- 
 fore the first birthday of Georia Augusta Minerva, I was in the 
 woods, culling those delicious wild flowers which there lift up 
 their modest heads, when, suddenly, a quadroon man, not ugly- 
 looking, but very impudent and lascivious in expression, sud- 
 denly emerged, — and the fright determined her complexion ; 
 and the villain actually chased me, and — " 
 
 " Yeth, and by Gum, he coicli yer, too; 'case I knows de very 
 nigger!" broke in the impudent, stuttering son of Ham. 
 
 Scene II. — Sensation; lady faints ; exit impudence, amid 
 a shower of plates, and " Well, I swears ! " 
 
 " My father sold charcoal, and that was the cause of it ! " 
 
 There are three general classes of women : the light-eyed, 
 light-haired, and fair-complexioned ; the dark-haired, dark- 
 eyed, and dark-complexioned. The first are blondes, the 
 second brunettes. Intermediate is a class partaking of the 
 characteristics of both : women with light hair and e}^es, but 
 dark-skinned ; others the exact reverse of these ; and another, 
 the ruddy class. The two first, however, predominate largely 
 over the third in this country ; and it is those only here pro- 
 posed to be briefly analyzed. 
 
 Now, the eyes are the mirrors of the soul ; at least when said 
 eyes are caught unawares, and do not see you looking too 
 closely at them, in the endeavor to penetrate to the informing 
 soul behind them. 
 
 Some writer has affirmed that the devil himself is black-eyed ; 
 and that woe betides the unlucky wight who weds a black-eyed 
 
318 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 woman ! — wnich latter assertion the present writer takes issue 
 with decidedly ; for although there may be fewer gentle blaek- 
 e} T ed women than of blue or gray, }-et it is certain that quite as 
 much amiability is developed by, and characterizes black-eyed 
 ladies, as in the case of others of any hue or shade whatever ; 
 while on the score of virtue, they are all three, perhaps, even as 
 a general rule. Yet as blondes predominate in numbers, there 
 will be found among women of easy virtue, ten cold, light-eyed 
 blondes, to every single brunette, or black-eyed woman, not 
 alone in America, but the whole wide world over, if we except 
 the swarming hordes of Tartary, China, the Ocean Isles, and 
 populous Japan ; and even then we have all light-e3 r ed Europe, 
 with the teeming millions of Russia, to back up this assertion. 
 
 A black-eyed woman is more easily overcome from loitliin 
 than her light-e} T ed sister, but she resists outward pressure a 
 great deal more, and laughs at the, to her, ridiculous idea of 
 yielding unless she chooses to do so from whim, caprice, or her 
 own especial will. A light-eyed woman makes all sorts of lame 
 excuses for a fall, and is apt to urge " psychologic" fascination 
 as " the cause of it," not seeing how utterly absurd is such a plea, 
 
 — one which no brunette on earth would descend to make, be- 
 cause she knows its general contemptible silliness ! 
 
 A light-eyed woman is most easiby overcome from without, 
 and such will sell themselves far more readily than their brown- 
 skinned opposites. If one of these latter loves, she loves all 
 over ; nor can all earth, or an} r other power, sway or swerve her 
 deep integrity and devotion to the object she gives her heart to. 
 She would die first ! Not so the light-eyed woman, for she can 
 love more than once, and more than one too, at the same time, 
 
 — and in the same direction ; and, strange to say, apparently 
 without deeming herself unjust to either, — or herself! On the 
 other hand the love of the brunette is more liable to an upsettal 
 than a blonde's, and (/she changes, if her jealous}*- is once fairly 
 kindled, hell never yet blazed with more vehement fury than 
 will her fire-packed soul ! If she deems him false to whom she 
 has given her heart, she does not mope, get the hysterics, go off 
 into fainting-fits, or to bed with a quick consumption, like your 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 319 
 
 fair Cynthias or fickle blondettes ; but she blazes her wrath 
 right straight out, and no mistake ; and no tigress robbed of her 
 cubs is so fierce, revengeful, vindictive, cruel and remorseless 
 as she ! She laughs at anything short of perfect vengeance ; life 
 itself is not too sacred a sacrifice to her injured honor and 
 blighted love ; and, unlike the reasoning blonde, she would not 
 hesitate to wreak her spite on the head of her rival, even to the 
 bitter death, and although she knew that rival to be innocent, 
 and the man alone in fault. " Get out of my sunshine ! " is her 
 motto, " or I'll kill you if you don't ! In fact, I guess I'll kill you 
 any way — to make sure ! " Take him back to her arms again, 
 she certainly will, ten times over. Nay, she will even restore 
 him to her heart ; but to her soul, and perfect confidence? Never ! 
 As well might } t ou throw sand in the sea, and expect it to return 
 to your hand again ! For she will nurse the memory as a fitter 
 morsel forever and for a} T e ; in which respect she differs both 
 from the blonde and the ruddy woman, and is more vehement 
 than both combined. 
 
 As well tell 3 T esterday to come back and change places 
 with the morrow, as expect her to look on the recreant lover or 
 husband with the same affectionate e} r es again. It is an utter 
 impossibility ; for when once the storm has been raised in her 
 soul, it never wholly calms again ; nor can, or will she, even to 
 another, ever again be wholly what she was before. Her na- 
 ture is sharp, sudden, quick as the lightning's flash, and burn- 
 ing as its fire. There is no sacrifice she will not freely, gladly, 
 make for him she loves. There is no revenge too terrible for 
 her to wreak upon him, and the innocent object, perhaps, of his 
 attentions, — the unthinking arouser of her jealousy. A bru- 
 nette's love is of the ardent, fiery, passionate kind ; and she for- 
 ever lacks the delicate tenderness and spirituality which charac- 
 terize the blonde. She is more passional, less emotional in the 
 higher sense, — less devotional ; quicker tempered ; more imperi- 
 ous, exacting, demanding, selfish, one-sided ; less intuitive ; less 
 domestic, and never makes as good a nurse as a blonde. She is 
 more vain, but less proud than a blonde ; is far less delicate, 
 scrupulous, far-seeing, provident ; cares little for religion ; is care- 
 
320 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 less of her soul ; thinks its chances good, that it will be taken 
 care of anyhow; and she seldom troubles herself about laying 
 up treasures in heaven — or anywhere else. But with all these 
 disadvantages, she has one grand sweeping virtue. She is honest, 
 speaks her mind ; is trustable ; not deceitful ; cannot easily put 
 on and demonstrate what she does not feel ; chafes under re- 
 straint ; and when she goes to the bad — which she may do for 
 love ; but never, unlike the blonde — for money ! — she is 
 never one-tenth as dangerous, nor one-fiftieth as bad ; for the 
 ivorst women who ever trod this globe of ours were all blondes ; 
 and the best the world ever saw, from the Virgin Mary down- 
 ward, have been brunettes, or brunettesque. 
 
 All the three temperaments of women have advantages over 
 each other. But the middle or ruddy woman never experiences 
 either the intensities of the brunette, or the intellectual raptures 
 of the blonde. 
 
 A blonde woman is incapable of even one-half the intense 
 passionateness or passione of her dark-skinned rival, save in 
 very rare instances — when she loves ! — but is competent to an 
 immeasurably finer, more delicate, discerning, calm, gentle, 
 tender, sweet, lofty sow7-subduing love, which, if it be fairly set- 
 tled, will last to the door of the tomb and beyond it ; while any 
 brunette that ever lived will forget her grief, survive her fiery, 
 volcanic, tempestuous love, and marry again, and that too im- 
 pulsively, and sometimes far too hastily. To offset these disad- 
 vantages, the brunette loves her child with more devotion than 
 a blonde. She is sometimes a vampire, but very seldom, be- 
 cause she possesses the power of winning men naturally, which 
 all blondes do not ; and besides all this, ten blondes commit 
 foeticide to one brunette. 
 
 Brunettes are quicker tempered, but less quarrelsome, and are 
 never half so envious as the fair-locked damsel. She resists 
 temptation better ; nor can she be lured at all by what draws 
 her light sister ; and the dark lady bears up when fate, fortune, 
 earth and heaven are against her, far better than the fairer dame ; 
 and when she sinks never falls so low ! — but then again, when 
 she rises, never soars so high ! Her crimes are seldom of the 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 321 
 
 Borgia stamp, hut are more frequently the impulsions of the 
 moment ; and when she sins, she is far more easily reclaimed, 
 because her heart never becomes wholly tough or callous. True, 
 there have been some brunette fiends in the world, but their num- 
 bers are not large. 
 
 The same diseases that attack and destroy fair women are 
 not the same dark ones fall beneath. Twenty blondes are dis- 
 eased in the nerves, have complaints usually called " Female," 
 and are afflicted with Avasting disorders, to every brunette, whose 
 troubles are of a precisely opposite character. Among men, on 
 the contrary, the above ratios are exactly reversed, with refer- 
 ence to the different complexions. 
 
 In regard to other departments of human nature, it is cer- 
 tain that the light man is most domestic ; loves home better, on 
 a steady strain ; but parts from it easier, and with fewer keen 
 pangs ; becomes less intensely homesick when away ; and re- 
 turns to it with far less of a sunburst of enthusiasm, than the 
 dark man ; but his joy lasts far longer ; hence, as a general 
 thing,he is far safer to tie to ; for among others, the reason that 
 he is a slower coach in every wa}^, and being less impulsive, is 
 steadier in the long run than a brunette. 
 
 In the race for wives, widowers have the inside track against 
 men, old or young, who have never been married, all other 
 things and advantages being equal, except wealth ; for if two 
 men, of equal age, station and wealth, one blonde, the other 
 brunette, are rivals for the same woman, whether she be blonde, 
 ruddy, or brunette, the light-haired, light-eyed man will win. 
 But if both are poor, the dark man gives odds to and beats the 
 other out of sight, because the light man understands the law 
 of money-making and display a great deal better than any dark 
 man possibly can, for but few such ever reach financial great- 
 ness, and in the race for woman, as a general rule, diamonds is 
 a trump card, and when well played, as a light man alwaj's 
 knows how to do, it will clean the board and take the trick nine 
 times in ten. But, if the contest between two such rivals turns 
 on and depends upon the person jb of either, the dark man leaves 
 his contestant hull down in short order. 
 
322 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 The light mau is electrical, and dazzles a woman. The dark 
 man is magnetic, and attracts her. That's the difference. 
 
 A widow's chances for re-marriage, up to her forty-fourth 
 year, are equal to a girl's over twenty, but less than that of girls 
 below that age ; but are ten times better after she passes forty 
 than that of a single woman turned of twenty-five. 
 
 All things being equal, a blonde widow over thirty-five will 
 give odds to any brunette, and get a husband quicker ; but under 
 that age she stands a very slim chance beside her dark rival. 
 
 Both blondes and brunettes — single — are apt to forget that it 
 is not faces and figures that a man wants, but solid qualities in 
 a woman ; and both play the external physical card, — intoxicate 
 his senses ; flatter his vanity ; obfuscate his intellect ; inflame 
 his passions, and infatuate his soul, and win him with that sort 
 of bait up to their thirty-fifth j^ear. But after that is passed, 
 or they are in widowhood, they play altogether better cards, and 
 hence get better husbands than they possibly could while 
 younger, because a loftier class of men are attracted by them 
 than the giddy fools who flutter round 3'ounger and more exter- 
 nally attractive women. Both classes have at that age learned 
 what girls ought to but will not understand, that faces should 
 be the index of lofty qualities of mind and feeling, not a mere 
 advertisement of apartments to let, with modern improvements 
 — among which is a frightful capacity of running up milliners' 
 and doctors' bills. It is soul and mind a man wants in a woman, 
 and not mere figure, or any sort of paint or cotton aids ; but it 
 is thought and soul, not flesh and fol-loll, which allures sensible 
 lovers ; hence a girl who seeks to win a genuine man must play 
 a judicious hand of mental, social, moral and commonsensical 
 affectionate cards, not the physical mainly, as it is the fashion 
 to do in these modern times ; for that bait catches either worth- 
 less scamps or emptj'-headed fools, both of which are rather 
 poor investments as husbands. 
 
 Sometimes such a girl, playing such a card, will very likely 
 succeed in fastening some atheistic, bragging fool, vain of his 
 clothes, who travels around with a pocket full of love letters, 
 written to himself by himself, and lots of photographs which he 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 323 
 
 takes every opportunity to show off and boast bis conquests 
 over tbe originals, — proving himself, thereby, a doubty-rtyecl 
 scoundrel ; for if they are pictures of living women, outside the 
 brothels, he probably slanders them, in which case he is of 
 course a scoundrel ! If his stories of conquest and favors are 
 true, and tbe women be other than light-love ladies, i. e., com- 
 mon strumpets, — then he is an infamous wretch and fool to boot. 
 He may boast to his full of brothelite favors ; but is a low dog 
 for betraying a decent woman's trust and confidence, — if decent 
 women ever grant such favors. Can they? If the pictures 
 have no originals, but were purchased for the use he puts them 
 to, then he is a fine tripartite combination of scoundrel, fool 
 and liar ! — a regular " case" whose only probable female asso- 
 ciates are such as low-lived pieces of men pick up in the noisome 
 slums of Boston, Hartford, New York and other great centres ; 
 besides which the probability is that such a thing in man's shape 
 is a practical solitaire, unfit for woman's societ}^, and a foul dis- 
 grace to the form he wears ! A " case," indeed ! 
 
 The origin of the terms, " case," " hard case," was, that 
 once there was a low fellow bearing that name, who was per 
 petually boasting of his amours, without any more solid basis 
 of truth than a diseased vanity, ridiculous egotism, and a 
 matchless capacity of lying. One such boasting-braggart fool 
 the author of this fell in with ; and that Heaven may protect 
 all women from the foul presence of all such is his fervent 
 prayer ! for if a woman is weak enough to trust her honor to 
 such a burlesque on manhood she's a ruined being ! If she 
 marries him her fate is sealed ; for the likelihood is that within 
 fifteen } T ears he will wear crape on his hat three or four times, 
 as sad memorials of the " dear departed," numbers one, two, 
 three or four. In previous pages the female vampire was de- 
 scribed ; such fellows, such unmitigated, heaven-abandoned 
 profligates as the sort just limned, are their natural congeners — 
 male specimens of the same order. Let us turn from the con- 
 templation of such wretches and unprincipled monstrosities to 
 our more congenial theme. 
 
 As a general thing brunette ladies, all other things b^ing 
 
32-4 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 equal, and 'the opportunities the same, will give odds to the 
 blonde and fairly outshine her. Men find it extremely difficult 
 to resist their fascinations ; and there is an old legend extant to 
 the effect that all Olympus was at peace until a brunette made 
 her appearance there ; for no sooner did the gods lay eyes on 
 her than every one of them went wild ; and even Cupid forgot 
 his vocation by reason of his captivity to her wilful, beautiful, 
 devilishly delightful ladyship. And earthly men are no better 
 off if her brunetteship understands herself, and " she do!" 
 They yield to the magic of her presence simply because they 
 cannot help it ; and that's the long and short of it ! She is 
 more spritely, and sprightly, too ; vivacious, audacious, wil- 
 fully gracious ; full to the lips of richness, ripeness, verve, 
 elan; and can reach a man's heart, and turn his head a great 
 deal quicker, easier, and with infinitely more exquisite tact than 
 the rarest blonde of them all. 
 
 . Brunettes are very generally smaller in stature, and finer 
 formed than blondes ; and all small women dress better, and 
 make a far more effective display of their charms, natural and 
 artistic, than do large ones ; while a dark-eyed, dark-haired 
 beauty will play a ribbon against a man's senses, brains, heart 
 and fortune, and will win the triple game nine times in ten, 
 before your slower blonde gets her batteries in position. But, 
 when the latter does get ready, the dark lady must open up her 
 sharpest, quickest, liUingest fire, for if she don't, she's done for, 
 sure ! because when a smart blonde attacks a man in right-down 
 earnest, she generally makes him forget everything but her, — 
 including brunettes, common-sense, sanhty, judgment ; she makes 
 a marionette of him, petrifies him, turns his brain upside down, 
 and his wits inside out ; and she settles him in short order, for 
 her heavier artillery does far more effective work in a short 
 time than all the light firing from brunettedom can possibly. 
 
 But in the general game the brunette has the best of her 
 rival, who usually shoots too high, — among the stars, — while 
 the dark lady fires low and kills, because her guns are charged 
 with passion, and attacking the foe between wind and — well, 
 she wins him, that's all ! 
 
WOMAX, LOrE, AND MARRIAGE. 325 
 
 Without being compelled to copy from another work from the 
 same pen as this an article on " The Seven Magnetic Laws of 
 Love," the author cannot here tell several profound truths rela- 
 tive to lost or dead loves, and the methods of their restoration, 
 but, nevertheless, will here lay down certain principles which 
 have been tested in the crucibles of time and trial, and have 
 never yet failed. These are : the blonde woman is more apt to 
 turn her husband's love from her than is the brunette ; nor can 
 she get him back by the same methods that the dark woman can 
 under similar circumstances. "When the light woman seeks to 
 recover a recreant husband, she generally fails in her effort, 
 because she plays the role of love and tears, neither of which 
 are half as effective in her hands as in the dark woman's ; for 
 her nature is all love, all tears, hence she plays them with a 
 natural power, which the fairer one can never hope to wield. 
 Her plan is to fix her soul on will, purpose, justice, and to play 
 the role of hopeful wife, and wifely duty ; to storm the citadel 
 of his manhood, her wifehood ; attack his reason, and carry 
 him back by storm. 
 
 Now, the brunette cannot do this, because she belongs to the 
 emotional side, — the tender, passionate feeling region ; one 
 attacks a man's head, the other storms his heart. Those who 
 have read the article referred to will comprehend the entire 
 rationale of this part of the subject ; those who have not will 
 be able to do so by reading the book, a notice of which is ap- 
 pended hereto. 
 
 Scene : a vast temple, occupied by five thousand husbandless 
 women, all of whom have gathered there in attendance upon an 
 auction, for three husbands are to be sold to-day — not that 
 three millions are not sold every da} r ! — but not in the present 
 sense, for the women there have come to bid for husbands. See, 
 there comes the auctioneer; he speaks; listen: "Ladies all, 
 to-day we have only three specimens for sale ; the first of which 
 I will now put up. Ladies, this is an unpolished lump of gold 
 — although he has none of it, being poor ; but he is honest, in- 
 dustrious, rather sunburnt, but a Man, and a better mechanic 
 
326 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 never walked ! Who bids ? What ! five thousand of you and 
 ne'er a bid ! Ah ! yes, one ! — going — going — gone. Taken 
 by Miss Sensible. Now the next one for sale is a polished gen- 
 tleman in education and manners, and he dresses in the height 
 of fashion; sings well and plays better — three card monte and 
 faro ! Who bids for this soft-skinned Adonis — a perfect lady- 
 killer? What! five hundred bids? Surprising — please settle 
 it among yourselves who takes him. The next lot is sixty-five 
 years old; is rather cross, not handsome at all, is tyrannical, 
 thinks wife and horses belong to the same category ; but, to 
 make amends for his gout, rheum}*- e3*es and other trifles — is 
 worth a million ! Who bids? Heavens ! four thousand four hun- 
 dred and ninety-five bids ! What an astonishing power is 
 money ! " Scene closes : five thousand less one have gone to 
 deep sorrow. One only went to happiness ! 
 
 That man or woman, in whom love has died out, and in whose 
 emotional nature there are no tides, no ebbs, no flows, but only 
 a lake-like evenness, or Mediterranean tidelessness, needs a re- 
 juvenescence of the dead or torpid Will ; will to think and do ; 
 will to kill the eternal placidity of things ; will to reconstruct 
 the shattered love ; will to realize the purposes of life, and the 
 divine uses of affection ; will to break the dreadful monotony, 
 and to actualize existence as it ought to be. How can this be 
 clone? is the question of questions in the minds of millions of 
 sufferers, now wrecked and stranded, almost hopelessly, on the 
 banks of the rushing ocean of life. It is a mixed question, and 
 a vast one. not wholly to be answered in this volume, save by a 
 general reply : Increase the blood force by eating the best 
 of food; by the cold bath (never by drugs), and try to bring 
 the mind to bear upon the matter, and in six weeks that error 
 will be corrected. Again : suppose all the tide is one side 
 and none whatever on the other ; what then ? Reply : Then 
 it is the business of both to apply themselves to the only ob- 
 vious means of ending such a state of things. Time allowed, ten 
 days. 
 
 But in either of the above cases reasons should be given : — 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 327 
 
 "Well, here they are : everything in nature evolves from itself an 
 atmosphere, as flowers do perfume. So also do we. Every one 
 knows that laughing is catching; and any one who has ever 
 seen a mob knows that the fiercer passions of human nature are 
 transmissible from one to another, until thousands become in- 
 fected and infuriate also ; and for no other reason than their ner- 
 vous and magnetic susceptibility to impressions from the external 
 world. In the presence of a devil we are almost death sure to 
 absorb the prevailing devilment, no matter what form it may 
 chance to take. If we are close to those in whom anger, pity, 
 jollity, pain, ambition, love, prevails, to that tune will our own 
 organs be pitched in the exact ratio of our impressionability. 
 All the world knows this, yet practically ignores or forgets the 
 knowledge in, and at the very time and place it is most needed, 
 and can be put to the highest and best uses. 
 
 Our wisdom very often comes too late. We bend to circum- 
 stances, which, had we thought of the means at the right time, 
 we could have risen above ; and we pall and blanch and tremble 
 at obstacles in our paths, which we afterward well knew we 
 could, had we been so minded, have swept away, or leaped over 
 with the utmost ease. 
 
 The fundamental axioms of this book, those from the same 
 pen, and of the soul which gives them to mankind, are these : 
 Love lieth at the foundation : "Will reigneth omnipotent : Good- 
 ness is Godness, and that is Power : Silence is strength. The 
 books : their object was and is to do somewhat toward laying 
 the firm foundations of a better state of things in the broad 
 lands, and above all, in the world of love, for until love is reju- 
 venated the blessed Gospel of the dear Christ — dear and true, 
 and grand beyond compare, whether God incarnate or human 
 man ! — will never be comprehended in its spirit and its truth, 
 therefore never be obeyed and followed. Hence the books 
 teach these lessons : Purify the Loves : Strengthen the Will : 
 Increase the Personal Power : Cultivate Goodness : Prolong 
 your youth and life by so doing: Trust ever in God and. do 
 right. Then will Shiloh come to every human soul, and then 
 will every eye discern the sheen of heaven's golden glory, illu- 
 
328 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 mining the wild and dreary waste of waters, which we call hu- 
 man life below ! Undoubtedly the author's life has not been as 
 perfect as he could wish, yet he has done the best he could ; 
 leaves no deadly foes behind him, feels no hatred or ill-will 
 toward even one of God's creatures, and can truly say, as one 
 did before him, and from the bottom of his heart : — 
 
 " Yet every friend partakes my store, 
 And want goes smiling from my door. 
 "Will forty shillings sooth the breast 
 Of -worth or industry distressed, 
 This sum I cheerfully impart : 
 'Tis fourscore pleasures to my heart. 
 And you may make by means like these 
 Five talents ten whene'er you please. 
 'Tis true my little purse grows light ; 
 But then I sleep so good at night. 
 This grand specific will prevail 
 When all the doctor's opiates fail." 
 
 "Whatever emotion agitates us, impels from us an atmosphere 
 charged with what we feel, and whoever comes within that at- 
 mosphere must, to a greater or less extent, feel just as we do. 
 Now, of all other things, passion generates the strongest and 
 most extensive and pervasive atmosphere, and one which, above 
 all others, most readily affects all persons who come within its 
 influence, except such persons be so radically dead in passional 
 respects as to be wholly insulated or impervious to its action. 
 Without enlarging on this point, let us here say that mutuality 
 results only when one sphere blends two beings. Then, and 
 then only, will the acme of marriage be fully realized in all its 
 holy and pure intensities — its entirely indescribable soul and 
 spirit happiness and joy. Surely no one can be so dull as 
 not to see the enormous freight of wisdom concealed within 
 these last ten lines ! For in them is the grand truth that the 
 male soul must, to be happy, inhale the magnetic and ethereal 
 aroma flowing from the divine nature of woman when the fires 
 of her soul are kindled by the torch of love ; and that the woman 
 cannot really know herself for the celestial being she is, until 
 
W01TAX, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. - 329 
 
 she drinks in the dear delight flashed forth from the eyes and 
 exhaled from the spirit of the man she loves, and who adores 
 her in return. Then, ah! then! Slow music! — lights half 
 down ! — let the blessed curtain fall ! for two souls have joined 
 natures, and basking in the golden sunshine of reciprocal affec- 
 tion, are crowned with God's radiance, realizing that love alone 
 can give the soul more fulness of the eternal world, than all 
 the beggai-ly materialisms and lusts a myriad earths could afford 
 in the march of a double file of eternities ! — because love is 
 the infinite, exhaustless, limitless sea whereon they float, 
 while all nature sings their epithalamium. This is true love, 
 which only, at present, the few can know and understand, but 
 it is an unknown, undreamed-of thing to the masses — them asses 
 — and will be so as long as bodies fetch premiums and souls are 
 heavily discounted, as they are in these rapid days ! 
 
 The light-skinned men of America are better educated than 
 the darker ones. They rule the world of mind and move in 
 the sphere of intellect. They have infinitely more talent but 
 less original- genius than the dark man, who has in addition a 
 great deal more feeling, soul, emotion, charity, generosity, 
 love ! He can never soar amid the cursed ethics of cent per 
 cent, nor reap millions where he only sowed hundreds, as the 
 light man can and does ; but then he feels intenseby, immensely 
 more, and enjoys life with greater zest and gusto. The light 
 man is slower, cooler, less heartful ; generally smaller when he 
 is small, and a great deal larger and grander when he is grand. 
 At all times he is more close and a deal more arbitrary. Being 
 less excitable and passional, he is less susceptible to the per- 
 sonal charms of other ladies. He is less demonstrative in his 
 love than his opposite, bul cannot hold a woman of soul with 
 half the power the darker man can. 
 
 In New England there are plenty of women capable of 
 strongly loving, but the proportion of men who are so is very 
 small indeed, taking the entire population, by and large ; for 
 most of them are too cold, selfish, grasping, hard, — and have 
 precious little of that rare outburst spontaneity and expressive 
 manliness to be found either north, south or west of the Isew 
 
330 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 England States ; and this is quite as attributable to their mode 
 of life as to their sterile soil and unfavorable climate. A full, 
 free, open, generous-hearted man, native of and resident on 
 the soil of New England, may be found, but such has not fallen 
 to the lot of the writer of this, who has seen many, but none 
 who entirely filled the bill of even a half-ideal manliness. 
 There's something radically wrong, and unnecessarily small, 
 in the New England character. True, here and there you find 
 exceptional men, and several are before the writer's mind's e3 r e 
 at this moment ; but such are quite aside from the nearly or almost 
 universal rule. As a consequence of the scarcity of large-souled 
 men, whenever the New Englanders find one taller than the 
 average — and it is their habit to belittle every one but them- 
 selves — they forthwith idolize him or her, and so a fanatic, 
 like Wendell Phillips, — a frothy agitator — only that, and 
 nothing more ! — becomes to them a demigod. It is only out 
 of New England that the New Englander shows the stuff at 
 bottom. It is only in the great West, the sunny South, New 
 York, or in far-off lands that the real material underlying his 
 every-day self hood has a chance to develop itself. But under 
 such conditions the New England man looms up into colossal 
 proportions, and shows his kingship finely. There's not room 
 enough for him upon his native soil. He requires the whole 
 world for a workshop, and the universe itself is none too large 
 a field for him. Insatiably grasping both for knowledge and 
 money, he would bore a hole through the walls of heaven to get 
 the first, and open an ice-creamery in hell to gain the latter 
 — and unquestionably succeed in the first case, and, when 
 satisfied with his pile, whittle his way out of the latter while 
 his hoofed majesty was taking his noon siesta on the griddles 
 of the lower deep ! 
 
 The New Englander's mental constitution, like his birth- 
 place, is founded upon solid granite rock, unshakable by any 
 sort of earthquake ; firmly knit, close-grained, tight-fisted, a 
 dozen common men rolled into one, but closely packed — for 
 emigration — for it requires other suns and soil than his own to 
 loosen him up, shake him apart, and let his unsleeping soul put 
 
WOMAN, LOFE, AND MARRIAGE. 331 
 
 forth its slow but vehement powers, and let the world see the 
 true grit and splendid stuff of the bottom man — the sturdy 
 courage and enduring pluck of the Pilgrim's blood ! Then the 
 Yankee becomes a giant in very truth ! 
 
 To resume the broken thread : As the natural offset against 
 the advantages the fairer man has over the darker one, the lat- 
 ter has a better chance for a lengthened period, not merely of 
 life, but what is of far more value, prolonged youthfulness, for 
 he is less quickly exhausted by excess of any kind ; and when 
 depleted, recuperates, even to increased energy, when, under 
 precisely similar conditions, the fair-skinned man sickens, 
 withers and dies ; else becomes chronically powerless mentally, 
 materially and emotionally, too. The rule applies to both 
 genders. Light people are infinitely more leech-like and vam- 
 piral than dark ones, mentally and physically ; for they are 
 mainly electric ; but the dark are magnetic, and naturally 
 abound in love, excitability, nerval-sensitiveness, fire, spirit ; 
 but, on the other hand, are incapable of such sustained intellec- 
 tual flights and mental continuity as is the fairer man. When 
 a dark man is original, he is most wonderfully and strangely 
 so ; but more first thoughts of weight and world-ruling power 
 and value flow from the brain of the light man in the ratio of 
 four to one ; and hence the worlds of mathematics, invention, 
 science, utility, logic, the drama, war, science, philosophy, 
 architecture, navigation and music, is mostly the fair man's 
 private and exclusive domain, wherein he reigns supreme lord 
 and king paramount, solely, undisputed and alone. But then 
 he lives in the future ; the dark man lives to-day. To the lat- 
 ter belong religious fervor, present ecstacy, physical joys, 
 delirious pleasures and rich dreamery, which the other pines 
 for, and pines vainly. 
 
 The dark-complexioned impart magnetism, hence vitality, 
 energy, strength, and — when under peculiar circumstances they 
 know how — absolute power, even to the extent of life -pro- 
 longation. How this is accomplished, — by natural means and 
 mental processes, together with an infinite deal more, within 
 the measures of the esoteric love-laws of the homos, — cannot, 
 
332 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAURI AGE. 
 
 of coarse, be given in this work ; and whether it will be here- 
 after, or not, depends upon conditions not yet in existence. 
 
 Dark people do not drain or sap their mates of life once in 
 a million cases ; which is proved by the fact that fifty-six light 
 men bury their wives to every two dark men who do the same. 
 
 Wives of light men die of consumption and similar diseases, 
 and become morbid mentally and phj-sically, a great deal more 
 frequently than those of the opposite cast ; and the majority of 
 women's chances for a long life is incomparably better with a 
 dark than any light man under heaven ! At least in America. 
 Why? Because light men (and women) are electric, and dark 
 men (and women) magnetic. Light people have more front 
 brain and less back brain than dark ones, hence run more to 
 mentality than their opposites. Light men have more love than 
 passion ; dark ones more passion than love. Light ones there- 
 fore have less stamina than dark ones. Great talent marks the 
 light complexion ; great genius marks the dark one. And be- 
 cause the brain, heart and nerves mark the light man ; and 
 great passion, stamina and physique the dark one, the child 
 fathered — alwa3 T s in a storm of passion — by the brunette is 
 better knit, made-up, physically, than the child of the light 
 man. But the latter has more children, and loses them by 
 death a great deal faster than the dark man ; for the latter has 
 more stomach, lungs, heart, a broader chest, back, limbs, and 
 ten times the fire of the light man. The dark person draws 
 sustenance readily from the air, light, food and drink ; and con- 
 verts it into flesh, lungs, bone, muscle, magnetism ; while the 
 light man converts his into thought ; hence the blonde person is 
 hard put to it to keep up a specific quantum of vital force ; 
 while the dark man has an overplus of it. His life is joyous, 
 hilarious, gloomy, suicidal, by fits and starts ; he is elastic ; suf- 
 fers more keenly, and gets over it quicker than the light per- 
 son ; he blusters and threatens more ; brags much ; is loud- 
 tongued ; open, generous, forgiving ; seldom grows rich, be- 
 cause he is not mean ; is never hypocritical, and when angry 
 spits it all out. He is very seldom, or never, a sneak, back- 
 biter or snob ; but can lie — for glory's sake — quite easily ! 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 333 
 
 He is never a secret foe, but always an open one. He don't 
 keep grudges, and lives for the present Now. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that each class has its advantages and 
 its faults. But if you want to see a domestic pandemonium, 
 why, marry two brunettes together. On the other hand, if you 
 want to see a quiet, interior, dreadful, but smothered hell, let 
 two genuine blondes come together, and you'll have it — nicely. 
 
 But change the parties, and let brunette unite with blonde, 
 and you have the elements of a first-class domestic paradise ; for 
 they offset each the other, and there is a natural fitness between 
 them, that, with prudence and care, will make their path one of 
 roses from the altar to the grave ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 How heartfully we long and in lonely hours how deeply we 
 yearn, for him or her whom we once loved, and who loved us, 
 but from whom sad misunderstandings, not real wrongs, intended 
 as such, have separated us ! Oh, how bitterly we regret the un- 
 kind look or hasty word which broke, in a thoughtless moment, the 
 silver links that bound us ; for somehow or other, even though 
 intellect tells us it was all right and for the best, the heart — 
 pulsing, throbbing, hungry, yearning heart — steadily refuses to 
 believe it, and still sighs for the old discarded love ; still re- 
 calls the sweet memories of days gone by, and will not erase 
 the cherished images from its graven tablets ! 
 
 The old love ivill come up, — will surge its memories upon us 
 in spite of the whirl of events, and the swirl of current life, — 
 while ever and anon it will strangely phantom itself in the 
 new faces that now claim our homage, and will sadly, dreamily, 
 smile upon us with ghostly yet benignant eyes, from behind the 
 windows of a new passion, builded on the ruins of the old ! No 
 wonder the " Prodigal Son " went home. Would that all the prod- 
 igal wives and husbands would snap their fingers at Mrs. Grundy, 
 take heart and courage, and bravely do the same ! — for there's 
 
334 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 no love like the old love, and none but those who have been unjust, 
 or sinned themselves, can form anything like an adequate idea 
 of the prodigious edge of joy once known and felt, in the long 
 foretime, when love crowned the drama, and the feast of life 
 was glad. 
 
 Pride, false pride, keeps many really fond hearts apart ; pre- 
 vents a man from owning up his error, and a woman from be- 
 ing truly herself; and yet, did they but recall the fact that 
 Pride is a servitor, and Love a born king, the latter would 
 speedily march in, and the false principle step out, for Love is 
 the conqueror by right of descent. 
 
 This false pride is often fostered by pretended friends and 
 meddlers, who, on pretence of righting wrongs, make things ten 
 times worse than they were before. Such people flatter the 
 vanity of the side they take, and add obstacles to those already 
 existing ; hence, it is well to be on one's guard, and to remem- 
 ber that they who too warmly espouse jonr cause, and overrate 
 you, and traduce your recreant, or recusant, or recalcitrant one, 
 generally have some designs upon 3 7 ou. Do not forget this. 
 
 What people who have love troubles mainly lack is courage 
 to do the right thing in spite of what the people say ; for the 
 " people " never make us happy, but often quite miserable in- 
 deed. 
 
 When a love is unreturned, some one is in gehenna ; and if 
 some one suffers, and God's laws are just, some one else must 
 be also made unhappy, and thus the circle spreads. When love 
 is unreciprocated, it is thenceforth dangerous, exceedingly, both 
 to the unloved one and the unloving ; because such a state of 
 things jars the emotional world, and darkens the eyes of an 
 immortal soul ; yet nevertheless, too often what men call, and 
 women fancy to be, true love, dies dead as a door-nail when 
 one of its poiuts are gained ; and this must react upon both per- 
 sons, and tell its bad story sooner or later, in this life or the 
 next. 
 
 Too frequently love's young, or even mature dream vanishes 
 into thin air, because based on the sliding sands of unsubstantial 
 ardor, and not on solid, deep-based regard and attachment. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 335 
 
 When such a union reaches the possessive climax, the thermom- 
 eter falls, and the barometer indicates stormy weather just ahead ; 
 and each comes down even more rapidly than they rose within 
 the glass of hope and life. While the turbulent fever reigns and 
 riots in the blood, tingling the nerves with exquisite rapture, 
 each to the other becomes transformed into an idol, and dons 
 the garb of seraphhood. This continues until each knows the 
 other's secret, and has nothing else to do or give. Then comes 
 the death of rapture, and, could we read them an hour after each 
 has made the sad discovery, we would behold the beginning of 
 many a fearful and terrible ending. He finds her to be " only 
 a woman, after all! — a mere human female — and no great 
 shakes at that ! " She finds him to be " only a sensuous brute 
 or half-fool ; coarse, mean, exacting ; deficient in secret nobility, 
 and, taken all in all, a first-class sham and tremendous fraud ! " 
 
 Had their love been actual, her very presence would be infi- 
 nitely dearer after than before; while she to him would be a 
 tower of energ} r , power and strength, — a sure and mighty refuge 
 to lean upon when wintry tempests raged around, and stormy 
 winds in bitter fury blew. Would that it were always so, but 
 alas ! such are exceptions to a general rule ! 
 
 Marriage, instead of being as it ought, a perpetual feast of 
 perfect fellowship, is, in far too many instances, a state of penal 
 servitude to the man, and a similar slavery to the woman ; as 
 the legitimate fruitage of which, brothels and social evils 
 abound ; the woman plays a bad game, else sickens and dies 
 outright ; and the man becomes a frequenter of doubtful places, 
 or some other sort of madman. Eugene Sue truly said : "Noth- 
 ing can be more rational than love ; nothing wiser than to wed." 
 Both being one in essence. 
 
 Sad are the times when wedded wives decay, 
 
 And brothels flourish, and harlots bear the sway. 
 
 These are the times ! The scarlet banner waves, 
 And wives, neglected, fill untimely graves. 
 
 Much of it, doubtless, springs from lack of patience on both 
 sides, and strenuous endeavor to mutually do better. 
 
336 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 When a man is in abaci chemical condition, or a woman either, 
 
 — and her nervous structure renders her much more irritable, at 
 times, and more sensitive always, beside her superior impres- 
 sionability to that of man ; and then her patience, as a general 
 thing, goes begging ; cool reason and sober judgment take wing, 
 and the elements of varied and compound discord are in prime 
 working order, — if at that time each would but stop and con- 
 sider themselves, and postpone all disagreements till healthful 
 states of mind and body permit them to see things as they ought 
 to, many a family would remain concordant and unbroken; for 
 most disagreements are merely verbal, chemical in origin, super- 
 ficial, and easily gotten over. 
 
 Keep your private affairs to yourself ; for no one but yourself 
 is really interested in hearing either the story of your loves or 
 losses ; except perhaps to make your confidence a vantage 
 ground from whence to play upon you in some way, at some 
 time, when themselves may chance to have an axe to grind, or a 
 point to make — at your expense ! The domestic affairs of peo- 
 ple should never be paraded to outsiders. 
 
 There are some people so constituted that they always tell all 
 they know and all they feel, hope, long for, or desire. There 
 are others who seem wholly incapable of refraining from taking 
 unfair advantage of what the}- thus become apprised of, and it 
 singularly chances that, in both business and love matters, these 
 two classes come together, — that is, the fools and the sharpers ; 
 
 — the lovers, or the wife and husband lose confidence in each 
 other, and one is ruined and the other becomes a wretch. In 
 love affairs, likewise, it is safe to never tell the iclwle story of it 
 before marriage, or even after it — for in the latter case action 
 will tell it far better than words possibly can ; and it is well in 
 all cases to leave something to be said, and more to be done. 
 Confidence carried to extremes does not always beget similar 
 returns ; especially in heart concerns, for in these days husbands 
 and lovers, and sometimes wives and sweethearts, are not 
 wholly true, but only so much as the current weather permits. 
 
 Above all it is excessively dangerous to one's peace of mind 
 to allow one's self to be either baited or badgered into telling 
 
WOMAN, LOrE, AND MARRIAGE. 837 
 
 one's own strictly secret and private affairs ; for to do so is to 
 that extent and degree to put one's self in another's power ; nor 
 will that other, no matter who it may be, be capable of resisting 
 the strong and delicious temptation to use the advantage such 
 knowledge gives to 3-our detriment and their advantage. If the 
 matter told is a great secret, they are sure to ensure their better 
 keeping of it by taking A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and, finally, 
 the whole infernal alphabet of gossips and scandal-mongers 
 into their " strictly private and secret and wholly sacred confi- 
 dence," and before a week rolls by, every one who knows you 
 is rolling the exquisite tit-bits under their tongues. It won't do 
 to unload your heart to any one save wife or husband ; even 
 sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, — to say nothing about 
 mothers-in-law ! may God — bless them — as the South Carolina 
 prisoner blessed that Commonwealth when they branded his 
 hand ! 
 
 It never pays to have confidants between wife and husband ; 
 nor to confide in an outsider all one's business, or all one 
 thinks, feels, hopes, expects, or even dreads; — and more es- 
 pecially to people who exhibit a taste and haste to unfreight 
 themselves of their private personal matters ; for a dog who will 
 fetch a bone will always carry one, — with a great deal more 
 dirt attached thereto than when he found it ; while no story 
 ever yet told lost anything in being retold, rehashed, and re- 
 embellished ! 
 
 While it is bad, very bad, to put too much confidence in 
 others, it is equally so to withhold it from each other ; for es- 
 pionage, watching, distrust, suspicion, are dreadful things in 
 any household ; and, what is more, are perfectly useless, because 
 no amount of watching will make a wife faithful or keep a hus- 
 band straight ; for if either makes up their mind to wrong the 
 other, nothing on earth but close imprisonment will avail ; and 
 even that has not always proved effectual, especially if a woman 
 is the subject. Mr. Connor suspected Ms wife, and shut her up 
 closely in her chamber, and then bought a big bull-dog and 
 turned him loose in the hall to keep the lovers away. Late that 
 night he heard voices ; — the lady and her lover had made 
 
338 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 friends with the dog ! Mr. Connor went upstairs to listen. He 
 didn't listen long. Next day his tailor declared it impossible 
 ever to mend the pantaloons Mr. Connor wore when he went up- 
 stairs — to listen! Mr. Connor sold that dog — very cheap, 
 and Mr. Connor's physician assured his patient that if Mr. Con- 
 nor was careful, he might be able to sit down in the course of 
 six weeks ! Mr. Connor retired from the dog-buying line and 
 from watching his wife ! 
 
 Trust a woman, and let her know it, and she cannot be either 
 coaxed, bribed or bullied into being false to you. But you just 
 be suspicious, — let her know that your opinion is that above all 
 sure things in this world she needs watching ; and of all sure 
 things in this world she will put a pair of horns on your head 
 just as easy ! — and before you have any idea that such an idea 
 ever yet entered her innocent mind ! 
 
 She who receives money or preaents from a man from whom 
 she has no right to take it, will repay it — but not in the same 
 sort of currency ! 
 
 Hearts dead to love leap to life when money jingles ! 
 
 The devil, the blues, and the whole infantry of hell, says the 
 Cyngalese proverb, visit the house where singing is unknown ; 
 but all tremble and stay out where music dwells. 
 
 To rely wholly upon, and confide entirely in, even the ordi- 
 narily tried associates and friends who surround you is not 
 overly wise. It does not, never did, will not, and can never, 
 pay to do so, even for charity's sake ; for charity and pity, like 
 confidence, trust and love, may be, and often is, misapplied ; 
 for those to whom we give our dole are in these days often 
 rank impostors, who riot and revel at the giver's cost, in every 
 way, shape and manner possible. 
 
 It is frequently by too much non-reserve that an honest woman 
 gives a false man chances to deceive and ruin her. A woman 
 may be, and often is, defeated by surprise ; but then she has 
 no right, and ought never to allow herself to be surprised. If 
 she suffers herself to be, and takes any wrong step in conse- 
 quence, or allows herself to be " ruined ' while in the indecisive 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 339 
 
 frame of mind, as many are, she has herself to blame, not only 
 for her own carelessness and its consequences, but for foolishly 
 making herself a temptation, too strong, perhaps, to be success- 
 fully resisted by him whom thus she tempts, and by whom she 
 falls. 
 
 The author has repeatedly, in this and other of his works, 
 urged the tremendous truth that woman is the real power of the 
 earth, and silently exerts more of it on human destiny than all 
 the men alive, or who ever lived, — a power evenly balanced for 
 good and evil ; and the sooner men learn this fact, and educate 
 and treat her accordingly, the sooner will the world be rid of 
 all that now bars its onwardness and upward growth. 
 
 There is not much doubt that the great majority of fallen 
 women come to be what they are, from a neglect of the 
 caution just given. "Who can read the masterly description of 
 "Night Scenes in the Metropolis," by G. D. Brown, and not 
 feel that the victims of trust, love and want, whom he describes 
 so pathetically, are good and worthy women at heart; and most 
 of whom, more sinned against than sinning, have been surprised 
 into taking the first false step ; and then, believing themselves 
 — but mistakenly — irretrievably ruined, and beyond the pale 
 of hope or mercy, have rushed blindly and headlong down the 
 steep grades of social ruin ! Not many can help so believing. 
 Saj's Mr. Brown : — 
 
 " To one whose daily occupation renders him an observer of every phase 
 of poverty, ■wretchedness and crime, the miseries of humanity assume new 
 and distinct forms ; earlier views are found to have been distorted ; cause 
 as well as effect is recognized, and the relationship of crime is changed. 
 He learns, from time to time, that one convicted of murder may be inno- 
 cent, the supposed thief an honest man, and that the beggar is not always 
 needy. Then, also, he learns that there is a great class, ostracised, it is 
 true, by society, below the level of the poor, below the level of the crimi- 
 nal, shut out from the pale of the church, almost shut out from hope and 
 God ! who are never innocent, who are always wretched, to whom moral- 
 ity and religion are but hollow masks, and life a horrid mockery. These 
 poor creatures, who dress gayly, laugh bitterly, suffer immeasurably, and 
 die gladly, are courted and shunned; they receive adulation and scorn, 
 flowers and curses. They are young and beautiful, and accept the homage 
 of senators, judges, and doctors; they reign supremely. After a while 
 dissipation produces illness, illness destroys the beauty ; youth, health and 
 
340 woman; love, and marhiage. 
 
 beauty gone, their little wealth soon follows ; then comes the slow sinking 
 through all those depths of degradation which society has prepared for 
 those it condemns. Hence it follows that each city has a sort of quaran- 
 tine, and beyond it, an abyss for the living, and a potter's field for the dead. 
 
 " New York has built at her prison, called the Tombs, a sort of causeway 
 over which the condemned pass. On the one side is inscribed, ' The way 
 of the transgressor is hard ; ' and on the other, the ' Bridge of Sighs ! ' New 
 York might go farther, and a few yards from her great thoroughfare, Broad- 
 way, in the immediate vicinity of her largest hotel palaces, place a placard, 
 and write, ' Abandon all hope, ye who enter here ! ' 
 
 "We are writing of night scenes in the city, of what one meets in the 
 streets and about the streets, at an hour when the rich and the prosperous, 
 the good and the honest, are supposed to be slumbering; when the phan- 
 toms of gaunt famine haunt the shadows, and sin and crime hold revelry. 
 Society, which creates many of its victims, should be made acquainted 
 with the condition of its sad handiwork; and first of all, let us present to 
 that proud parent its fairest daughters, earliest ruined, most bitterly blasted, 
 who wander in every street and avenue of the city, — frail ones, whom it 
 is indeed a bitter sarcasm to designate as the demi-monde. 
 
 " You who each sunny afternoon traverse the most fashionable prome- 
 nades of the city, up Broadway, on Fifth Avenue, are continually passing 
 groups of beautiful girls, richly dressed, fresh from the hands of the 
 coiffure, many of them having a distingue appearance, and faultlessly ele- 
 gant carriage. They are the ' observed of all observers ; ' they present a 
 charming appearance of modesty and naivete. Their rich dresses rustle 
 against others worn by j'oung ladies of the haut ton, sometimes more 
 fashionable, seldom more fair. Their bright eyes drop softly before the 
 stare of the daughter of Avealth, and then, perhaps, beam with a strange 
 light of recognition for her brother, walking at her side. Those eyes be- 
 tray their owner. If they are blue or gray, they have a cold, hard glitter; 
 if they are brown or black, they assume a look of intensity, fading into a 
 soft, dreamy haze. These are the reigning beauties of the demi-monde. 
 
 "As evening draws on, and the shop windows are lighted, you may see 
 them more and more frequently, till, as the hours pass by, in every part of 
 the immense city, presenting every grade of comeliness, every variety of 
 costume, they appear, pass by, and reappear, till they seem legion. Many 
 of these, in their admirable physique and their fresh, brilliant complexion, 
 would compare favorably with the vaunted beauties of many lands. Ar- 
 tists affirm that among them are found higher types of physical beauty 
 than exist in almost any other class, and that examples arc abundant. 
 
 " The number of these beautiful ones changes from time to time: it 
 passes from its maximum to its minimum in three years. At the same 
 time, this does not prevent some from lingering after their turn has come 
 to go away. Some, still considered as among the fairest, were met here 
 six, and even nine years ago. While they remain, hundreds whom they 
 knew in the first flush of youth and beauty have gone to their long home, 
 perhaps to be forgiven ! Who knows ! 
 
 " Though these poor creatures find some place they call home in nearly 
 every locality, as they pace every street, still the greater number are gath- 
 ered together in a place we have briefly referred to before, and which may 
 not inaptly be termed the ' Place of Sighs.' 
 
 "In this neighborhood, which includes the larger portion of the Eighth 
 and Fourteenth Wards, they occupy a large share of the houses, which are 
 interspersed with drinking-saloons, coffee-houses, oyster-cellars and sup- 
 per-rooms. On each corner, like a gloomy sentinel, stands the sample- 
 
 
WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 341 
 
 room or ' gin-mill.' On each side of the streets are the rows of houses 
 once the dwelling-places of well-to-do or opulent shop keepers. They pre- 
 sent a deserted and funereal appearance, with blinds all closed and a still- 
 ness that death produces when he enters — a sort of shadow from the grave. 
 In these houses they occupy rooms, usually furnished and let at prices 
 varying from three to twenty-fire dollars per week, and of which they are 
 not always the only occupants. Sometimes, alas ! they contain an aged wom- 
 an, a mother ! oftener a little child; but much more often there hangs about 
 a being— - a sort of horrible excrescence thrown otf from suffering and dis- 
 eased humanity, an object so loathsome and vile that we have neither lan- 
 guage to describe- nor name to call him. 
 
 " And here is what sometimes occurs in this nineteenth century, that is 
 infamous : 
 
 " The city of New York, which is a great city, sometimes chooses to be 
 hospitable and generous ; it determines to entertain by a great ball and 
 banquet the princes, nobles, and civic or military dignitaries of some re- 
 spectable foreign power. ' No expense is spared ; ' the fete is gorgeous ! 
 magnificent ! killing ! Every one is delighted — at least every one one 
 cares for, and the guests feel deeply gratified and highly honored. By and 
 by a strange thing comes to light. These affairs are usually gotten up by 
 some ring, and must be promptly paid for. They cost generally from one 
 hundred thousand to a quarter of a million of dollars. Now, suppose 
 money is at a low ebb in the city coffers, what is done? A consultation is 
 held, and in the evening an arrangement is made. The next morning the 
 police courts and station-houses are filled with ' nymphs du pave ; ' they 
 are fined ten, twenty, thirty dollars each, and the debt is paid! ! 
 
 " In some cities these fines are made, on special occasions, a hundred 
 dollars each, or one year in the work-house, but then they have few girls. 
 There are men in some cities whose fortunes are made in this way. 
 
 " On such occasions as these, this thing, which we cannot describe, be- 
 comes for the moment useful to the one who feeds and clothes him. He 
 pawns her clothes and pays her fine with the proceeds, or else, as this some- 
 times happens, he gives the rich hats, dresses and laces to another, and 
 allows the owner to be sent to ' the Island,' — fearful words to these poor 
 wretches. 
 
 " There are police officers in this place who are sometimes very good 
 men, but are generally ignorant and cruel. They are, after all, much like 
 other mortals, with likes and dislikes; they have favorites and victims. 
 Sometimes this favoritism leads to crime, and this victimizing to murder. 
 
 "There are other houses here, called boarding-places, whose inmates 
 sometimes live entirely within their walls, or are allowed to go out for a 
 walk of one or two hours, or perhaps half a day, once each week. In the 
 majority of cases they do no not suffer so many restrictions, and on Satur- 
 day or Sunday night have a certain liberty. On entering these places, they 
 are first burthened with debt for clothes at exorbitant prices, or board ; 
 and from this indebtedness it is hard to escape ; it clings to them and binds 
 them to the place. The girl is usually forced to pay the 'Madame' five 
 to twelve dollars per week for her board, in addition to the half of her 
 earnings. In these houses they soon learn — if they have not already ac- 
 quired it — the habit of constant and deep drinking. Intoxication spreads 
 among all. Immersed in guilt and misery, too wicked to pray, and not 
 daring to think, they drown the 'still, small voice within' in liquor and 
 wine. There are exceptions to this, — those who drink very sparingly ; 
 perhaps a few who do not drink at all. 
 
 "Among all these there are many who are generous, — few who, in their 
 
342 . WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAMIIAGE. 
 
 utter wretchedness, do not find time to pity others perhaps less unfortu- 
 nate. The thoroughly delicate and womanly deeds of charity performed by 
 some of these girls, would put to shame the boasted benevolence of women 
 in high places. Beggars know this. 
 
 " Sometimes these poor beings, in the ashes of their soul, keep alive 
 sparks which scintillate with the divine flame ; here is one incident from 
 hundreds : — 
 
 " One winter, on a cold bitter morning, while the prisoners were waiting 
 for examination in the hall of Jefferson Market Police Court, a party of 
 young inebriates, overflowing with meanness inspired by bad whiskey, 
 gathered about an old decrepit man, much drunker than themselves, and, 
 for amusement, were dashing water upon him. For some time they kept 
 up the sport, when a woman, richly dressed, rushed between them and their 
 victim, regardless of the water showered upon her, and covering him with 
 her person, launched upon the loafers a rebuke so scathing and full of in- 
 tense scorn, that they fell back, awed and silent, to their benches. Her 
 noble indignation made even these hardened and debased beings utterly 
 ashamed. 
 
 "A few moments after this occurred, a flashily-dressed young wretch 
 came towards her, and, taking her hand, unconsciously touched a plain 
 gold ring she wore. She drew her hand away with a look of horror ; he 
 endeavored to regain it, and examine the ring, when, turning upon him, 
 she said, ' My mother, a saint in heaven, wore that ring'and gave it to me 
 dying; should you again defile it by your touch, I would kill you.' 
 
 " That woman, who was thirty years old, had been on the street ten 
 years. 
 
 "All nationalities and all classes of society are represented here. You 
 may see the Italian ballet girl hand in hand with the Parisian artiste, Ger- 
 man girls from the bier-gartens and Irish girls from hotels and boarding- 
 houses, Biscayan girls from Spain, and Creole girls from Cuba ; English 
 girls from the manufacturing and University cities, and from that great 
 modern Babylon, London. There are a few Indian girls, of late from the 
 Western Reservations, and great numbers of African descent, of every 
 shade of complexion. There are Jewesses of many countries, who always 
 preserve their own t3'pe, and Scotch girls who always wear the plaid. 
 
 " We have said they are from all classes. Some are daughters of men 
 who are or have been merchant princes. One came here a few months ago 
 whose brother is the Mayor of a Western city. The first week she lost 
 her trunk, her clothes, and five hundred and fifty dollars, all her money, 
 and with it her watch. Robbed, turned out into the street, the second 
 week found her on the Island, and the fourth week she died. 
 
 " A wealthy planter brought his daughter here the first year of the war. 
 Leaving her at school, he paid for her studies, board, and allowance for 
 clothes, for two years, depositing, in addition, five thousand dollars for 
 contingencies. He became a distinguished field officer of the Confederate 
 army, was killed early in the war, and his daughter turned into the street, 
 now lives in this ' place of sighs.' 
 
 " New England factory towns send many here, city manufactories add 
 many more, and tew towns are so small, throughout the North and West, 
 that they have not sent one or more to represent them here. 
 
 "What light do statistics throw upon this subject? 
 
 " Superintendent Kennedy, of the Metropolitan Police, reported, in 18G6, 
 three thousand three hundred prostitutes (including girls in concert sa- 
 loons, some of whom were virtuous). They increase at the rate of about 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 343 
 
 eeven hundred per annum, which would give us, at the beginning of the 
 present year, about six thousand one hundred. 
 
 " Bishop Simpson's estimate in 1866 was twenty thousand. 
 
 " Yet people find time to cry over the misfortunes of the heroine in each 
 new novel, and to send red flannel waistcoats to the little Hottentots ! 
 
 " In addition to this, what can we say of this place of sighs, and those it 
 contains ? 
 
 " Of the mass we can say this : — 
 
 "They are afflicted with a species of insanity which loses the power of 
 thought. Calculations slip away from them, and elude them. The past is 
 terrible and bitter. In it they see a grim, fiendish face, laughing at and 
 mocking them. They resolutely close their eyes to shut out the possible 
 monster lurking in the future. They endeavor to be frivolous ; to chase 
 one thought rapidly away by another; to imitate the forgetfulness and vio- 
 lent transitions of madness — and they succeed. 
 
 "Society creates them, and is ashamed of them; meets them, and 
 ignores them — the daylight scorns them. Night only — the abyss which 
 received them — is proud of them, opens its arms, and protects. In the 
 night they reign. Entering the gloom, it enfolds them lovingly, and grad- 
 ually there grows up in their soul trust and hope, a confiding in, almost a 
 yearning for, the gloom of the grave. 
 
 " And this frail one, alone ; perhaps as much sinned against as sinning — 
 what of her? 
 
 "After the passion, gayety, and splendor of a ball-room night, she is 
 dashed to the earth, into the mire. Blinded, in agony, half crazed, she 
 gropes about till she find? the grave. She has not found this world a pleas- 
 ant place, nor a beautiful one to live in ; and perhaps, in the depths of hei 
 heart, she clings to a vague hope, a sunbeam which has strayed there from 
 her childhood's soul, and which she has cherished — God only knows how 
 — that perhaps, when she is dead, people will forgive, and — 
 
 " ' Think of her kindly. 
 Gently, and humanly.' 
 
 "Rough hands will place the once beautiful and dainty form in a coarse 
 deai coffin, that is, if she has been spared the experiments of medical stu- 
 dents at the hospital while living, and the dissecting knife when dead. They 
 will convey her to an obscure corner of the potter's field, and place her in 
 an unmarked grave. By and by, the grass will grow green above it — 
 green as it does above other graves. In summer the rain will patter down 
 upon it, the birds will sing over it ; in winter the snow will cover it with a 
 pure white mantle. In a little while all traces of it will be lost. People 
 will have forgotten her, not forgiven. 
 
 "Perhaps God is less pitiless than mortals. It is said He notes the fall 
 of a sparrow. 
 
 "Will. He forget?" 
 
 The writer of this book thinks not ! nor will He fail to remem- 
 ber him who does such wicked deeds, as people our streets with 
 lost souls ! — shall he say ? No ! for believing God to be most 
 merciful, most compassionate, all these wandering ones will one 
 day be gathered into His blessed fold, who doeth all things 
 well! 
 
344 WOMAN, LOVB, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 Poor .harlot i may God pity and compassionate her, for men 
 seldom do, and women never, unless she turns out, in her de- 
 spair, to be a first-class sensational murderess, and then, both 
 classes pity and lionize her. But not if she be poor, ill-clad, 
 rather rough in speech, and so trodden down that she dies a 
 daily death ; she is so crushed, so low, so fallen, so despised, so 
 trampled on by saints and sinners alike, from the surpliced 
 priest to the midnight-burglar and assassin, with hands wet with 
 human blood, and soul stained with human murder. Despised, 
 hated, shunned, and patronized! How we hate and slander, 
 vilify and abuse, all fallen women ! and yet how suddenly we 
 change our tune, and pipe a different music when one of our 
 own kith and kin is whirled and swirled along the dreadful 
 tide ! Then ! ah, then ! we begin to realize forbearance and 
 charity. 
 
 Within these latter years there has gone forth, on its destruc- 
 tive mission, a most mischievous doctrine, to the effect that 
 "whatever is is right ; " a sort of "philosophical" carte blanche 
 for deeds that are not, and never can be right. To help crush 
 out this withering falsity ; to assert the supremacy of con- 
 science, divine order and law ; to help explode this revived 
 fallacy, and to call back the wandering souls who, allured by 
 its glare, may have strayed away from the true path, — is the 
 reason that the author here reproduces a few pages from a lec- 
 ture of his, once published in pamphlet form, and afterwards 
 reprinted in his work called " Disembodied Man." In this 
 quotation the pronoun "I" appears for the first time direct 
 from the author in this book ; for which he craves pardon, re- 
 marking that, as it is a lecture, the apparent impropriety could 
 not well be avoided. And, as but few who will read this 
 book have' seen the others, it is here given a$ an excusable 
 repetition : — 
 
 Education has much to do in man and woman's final making up. There 
 is a deal of good in every soul — whole mountains and rivers thereof; but 
 there is also much that may be perverted — many a little brooklet of very 
 bitter water. In human education many of these have been unduly in- 
 creased, till now they threaten to overflow the whole estate. Let us dam 
 them up, cut off the supply, and see to it that these brooklets — the pas- 
 
W0MA3T, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 345 
 
 eions and bad tendencies — be not caused to flourish by such culture as the 
 oft-quoted maxims would encourage. 
 
 The age of extremes of one sort — now, happily, sliding away — bids 
 fair to be succeeded by another kind, unless good men and earnest women 
 6eek to check it ere too strongly grown and mind-entrenched. 
 
 We stand in the door of the dawn, fully persuaded that the sun now 
 rising will, ere long, gladden the hearts and homes of men. We have had 
 a surfeit of Philosophy, and we need a little common sense. The fact 
 ihat the race can see the first gleams of a better day, constitutes no just 
 reason why any man or woman should assume an attitude of self-com- 
 placency, and proclaim alike to those who can, and those who cannot think 
 clearly, that all the sin and sorrow, vice and misery, now causing the very 
 land to groan beneath the heavy load, is all right. Because to do so is to 
 proclaim — a lie ! — and never was, nor can be, otherwise. It will not do 
 to shift the responsibility of all existing evils from ourselves to the Creator. 
 Why? Because man's actions are mainly volitional results, and spring 
 from his great prerogative — limited — liberty of choice ! Hence God is 
 no more responsible for your deeds or mine, than we are for those of our 
 descendants forty centuries hence. Were it otherwise, then creation is a 
 stupendous farce, and God becomes our inveterate enemy, instead of being 
 what I believe Him — our best and most benignant friend. The Infinite 
 One created, made, fashioned and decreed the progression and procession 
 of all things. But His work is not yet done — the mighty task is not yet 
 completed ; for He is at this day still working up the worlds toward the 
 standard Himself can only know. He is still present with, and over us, in 
 all His divine Fatherhood and Providence ; He still smiles when we do His 
 will — still grieves, as of yore, at all that is bad or brutal, unseemly, un- 
 manly, unwomanly and wrong ! 
 
 No, no ; it will not do to charge God with our shortcomings, and none 
 but an arrant coward would seek to crawl away from the presence of the 
 music himself has evoked! Every true philanthropist — and these, be it 
 known, are not such as talk Temperance, and fatten on the Worm of the 
 Still — are not such as publicly mourn over harlotry, and let houses for its 
 prosecution — are not such as say, " It is all right," and by their daily ac- 
 tions give themselves the lie direct ; are not such as commiserated poor 
 Pompey and voted him back to the gyves ; are not such as went into holy 
 hysterics once a year, and from gayly-thronged platforms proclaimed the 
 negro a man and a brother, and next day " damned his black picture " be- 
 cause he offered love to their daughters, or attempted to sit down at the 
 same table — merely by way of testing their honesty, and perpetrating a 
 " black joke " at the same time ; not the strong-minded ones who are so 
 rampant for woman's rights, public applause, oratory and fanaticism, that 
 they must needs enlist for life in a warfare against all men — not one of 
 whom they ever made happy for a single hour; not your lady of harsh 
 voice and vinegar soul, who, in the business of world-saving, " goes it with 
 a rush," to the utter neglect of the fireside, the husband, the baby, and the 
 dear, sweet home; not the Spiritualist, who talks exceedingly spiritual — 
 and acts as if the body and its gratifications were the only things worth 
 while attending to ; not the Harmonialist, whose harmony of life, deed and 
 influence partakes of the nature of filing saws and discordant penny trum- 
 pets ; not of this sort is the true philanthropist ; but rather he (or she) who 
 in a quiet way does all the good possible — and sticks to it. Every such 
 an one, I repeat, realizes that the world needs bettering; and for that 
 reason feels called upon to encourage much less "talkee, talkec," and 
 much more action, action, with strong arm, steady purpose, and in the 
 
346 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 right direction. Evils — tremendous, soul-dwarfing, spirit-subjugating 
 evils — such as now afflict the world, can never be talked down; they 
 must be written, worked, lived, and fought down ; and the true business of 
 every man and woman who wishes well to the world, is to be up and doing, 
 and keep doing all the while. Will the evils whereof we so justly com- 
 plain — prostitution, for instance — disappear if we merely stand idly look- 
 ing on, proclaiming that it is all right, and voting ourselves philosophers, 
 when we approach much nearer being fools ? He or she who thinks so is 
 neither man nor woman, but only a sort of " What is it? " very interesting 
 to look at and listen to, but a " What is it? " nevertheless. 
 
 See! yonder goes a woman; she is fallen, degraded, lost to every sense 
 of decency or shame. Her present mission is to sell herself for so much 
 ready coin to the first human brute who will purchase her. Does she do 
 this fearful sin from the pure love of sinning? No! she does it that she 
 may hand over the jingling deity to the baker in exchange for — bread! 
 bread sir, to keep her soul within her body yet a little while, and to keep 
 that body above the ground for just a little longer. She is coarse and 
 untidy, uses bad language, and is low; but still, she is — a woman — like 
 your mother and like mine — and like them too, she was once pure, and 
 sweet, and beautiful, and good; but ah, Christ! how fallen, oh, how 
 fallen ! Yes, she was once like them ; God grant that they never be like 
 her. Is she fulfilling her proper destiny? Virtue is natural; vice is 
 acquired. Bias towards either is hereditary. Circumstance governs the 
 fate of many unfortunates like that woman : she, nor you, nor I, can con- 
 trol circumstance alone, but we can join the army of Goodness, before 
 which bad circumstance must fly, and better take its place. Come, let's 
 do it. Let us see how many of such fallen ones we can save in a year — 
 this very identical current year. Try ! Won't you ? 
 
 The woman, that wretched sister! Is she and her actions all right? 
 Nonsense ! Blasphemy to assert it ! She is sliding down the hill of ruin, 
 and will reach the fatal bottom, unless those who can, shall, and will, put 
 forth the effort to redeem and save her. She, poor thing; and there are 
 millions of such, — pore's the pity, and the shame, to those who have made 
 her and them what we see, — she is marring the beauty of her deathless soul ; 
 is killing by inches the body she wears ; is defacing the priceless tablets of 
 her immortal being; and whoever says all this is right, is a fit subject for 
 the lunatic hospital. And yet there are those who do make this preposterous 
 assertion. Now hundreds, aye, thousands, there be, who do not scruple to 
 brand that woman, — the unhappy representative of an entire class, — with 
 all sorts of infamous and opprobrious epithets, instead of, as they ought, 
 saying and doing all they can to reclaim and save her. They rack the lan- 
 guage for harsh names to apply to her, until the poor creature, feeling, 
 most bitterly feeling, that no kind heart throbs for her, no tenderness is, 
 or ever will be, vouchsafed ; that she must remain a victim to the spirit of 
 human cruelty, or what is, if possible, still worse — mock charity ; feeling 
 all this, and that she must continue to grope her way all alone through the 
 world, and then drop prematurely and uncared for into the cold damp grave 
 from a still colder world, and all unprepared, crawl up to the judgment 
 seat ; feeling all this and more, it is no great marvel that her heart grows 
 hard, and her once pure soul now totters on the very brink of desperation, 
 while she eats, drinks and sleeps, the food and drink and slumber of vice 
 and infamy, day by day, and week after week. Look ! . there she has 
 accosted a man upon the side-walk, but scarce has a single word passed ere 
 one of the patent guardians or costodians of the Public Morals, — an indi- 
 vidual in blue coat, brass buttons and large authority, who has just tossed 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 347 
 
 off a glass of the "good Rhein wein," — the generous proffer of a hurly 
 ruffian who can afford to pay for the protection of his magnificent looking- 
 glasses and marble counters, behind which he stands to deal out liquid ruin 
 at so much the glass, — catches sight of the cyprian plying her dreadful 
 trade. She, he knows, cannot pay, and so he grows indignantly scrupulous, 
 gruffly tells her to move on, and accelerates her movements with a round 
 oath or two, and a not very gentle push. She mutely obeys, because resist- 
 ance is out of the question, besides which she knows that he carries a legally 
 authorized bludgeon in his pocket, and that he would not hesitate to use it 
 on the slightest pretext, upon either herself or any one who should expos- 
 tulate or counsel gentler measures, — a very dirty bludgeon it is too, — still 
 he tries to keep it clean, and once in a while washes it of the blood-spots 
 and cleans it of the matted hair, — human hair, — from the heads of the 
 last half-dozen drunken sots whom he found asleep upon the side-walks, 
 and took such Christian means to arouse from their airy slumbers. But 
 why should we find fault ? Isn't he a Regular Policeman ? Well, be quiet 
 then, and don't complain. What better can you expect? Is it at all rea- 
 sonable to demand that an officer should have plenty of muscle, and a heart 
 at the same time ? Nonsense. Now I ask if all the parts, or any of this 
 true picture are right? and I answer No! and the utterance is both deep 
 and full; so deep, so loud, so full that the very vaults of Heaven echo back, 
 and ring out No ! 
 
 No human being exists but in whom the germs of the generous and good, 
 the beautiful and the true lie, ready to shoot forth into excellent glory. We 
 know this, and know it well. These germs may be in fallow ground, still 
 they are there, and it is your business, and that of every one else, to so 
 plough this fallow land that it shall cause seeds to springup and thriftily grow. 
 What though the soil be hard and stony, dry and parched; the fruit of the 
 culture will be rich and succulent, for the warming beams of God's sunlight 
 and grace will perfect and ripen the produce, and it shall be immortally 
 sweet, eternally beautiful and fragrant, forever and for aye ! 
 
 Reader, have you never observed the fact that even the very bad and vicious 
 occasionally flash forth somewhat of the Divine, — sometimes gleam out 
 the hidden glory? Well, there's amine of diamonds in every soul, and God 
 and nature, and all human love calls on you and to bring these diamonds 
 forth to the sunlight, that they may catch the radiance of Heaven, and 
 flash out their glories on the air and to the world, kindling up the emula- 
 tion of virtue and excellent doing in all human souls. 
 
 There goes that abandoned woman. Let us follow her — this prostitute 
 — this lost and ruined sister — this creature, fashioned after the likeness 
 of our God, but now, alas, so supremely foul and wretched. She is hieing 
 homeward! Homeward? what a mockery that word conveys ! yet she has 
 what she calls a home, and beneath that shelter, such as it is, lies at this 
 moment, upon its pallet of straw, a babe — her child — bone of her bone, 
 and flesh of her flesh. Poor infant ! truly begotten in sin and brought 
 forth in iniquity; but none the less a precious, priceless, immortal soul for 
 all that — a soul just as dear as any for which God's Son, as we are taught, 
 forsook the courts of glory and came to earth to suffer and to die on the 
 stony heights of Cavalry — a soul just as precious to the Infinite heart as the 
 best born of earth — because it is a human soul, and His life pulses through 
 it as well as through you or I, or the holiest ones of earth or heaven ; 
 and, albeit, we may, and as virtuous citizens of the great Avorld, can but 
 frown upon the guilt and folly that opened the gate by the which it entered 
 into outer being — yet nevertheless^ is a soul, and as such has crying 
 claims upon our love, and care, and kindliness ; for being here is not that 
 
3-18 WQMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 blessed baby's fault, and in the coming judgment, God's prosecuting angel 
 will hold it accountable for its own sins, not for its mother's sorrows and 
 misfortunes. And even for its own shortcomings, Sandalphon, the Prayer- 
 angel, will eloquently plead at the feet of the crucified Kedeemer, nor will 
 he plead in vain ! 
 
 Well, she has left the highway and turned down a narrow, dark, and 
 dreadful alley, one of these horrible sinks of moral poison, pestilence and 
 perdition — the awful and disgusting vice-cancers, sin-blotches, and fester- 
 ing pest-lanes, which are the eternal disgrace of all the great cities of the 
 world : infamous purlieus of misery, wherein gaunt Robbery moodily 
 sits plotting his villany, and pale Murder lies nursing red-handed Butch- 
 ery, who ere long will fright the world with very horror ! 
 
 How strangely people change ! A little while ago, and that woman's 
 crest was held aloft, and erect, in brazen impudence and defiance, as she 
 paced up and down the streets, a human spider, intent upon drawing silly hu- 
 man flies into her horrible web — a web which they can never quit as 
 pure, and good, and innocent in body and in mind, as when they entered ; 
 for it is poison — every thread and fibre of it, except the baby in the 
 bed — and the deadly odor of the Upas fills all the region round about. 
 
 Why turns she so quickly down that lane ? Well, I will tell you. Be- 
 cause the itching and the tingling of her breasts told her that the babe of 
 her agony and her shame was a-hungered for the thin blue milk of her 
 bosom. And so she quits the street, for maternal love is much stronger 
 than the love of guilt or money. Soon the glare of the street-lamp no 
 longer shines upon her form, for it is lost amid the labyrinths and devious 
 windings of that dark and noisome alley-way, this horrid tomb of all the 
 human virtues. But her aspect has changed ; and the flaunting courtesan 
 hangs her head, as she carefully and lightly threads her way along. The 
 harlot's sun has set, and the star of the Woman and the Mother reigns tri- 
 umphant for — an hour. 
 
 Up, up, up, the dark and filthy stairs she flies, for the milk pains urge 
 her on ; anon the attic is reached ; a little brass key turns in the lock ; a 
 ready match is ignited; the little lamp illumes the seven-by-nine- — den, 
 for chamber it cannot be called ; she runs to the bedside, falls lovingly 
 upon it, snatches up the prattler, presses it to her bosom, and " My babe, 
 my precious babe!" she cries, as the great round tears gush up from her 
 heart — her woman's heart, after all! The little one answers with a glee- 
 ful chuckle, and in another moment is busily engaged in drawing vitality 
 from the body of Weakness — virtuous life from the paps of Guilt ! Love, 
 pure, dear, sweet and precious love reigns then and there ; just such love 
 as your mother felt for you, my reader, my sister or my brother; just 
 such love, in kind, but not degree, as prompted the dear God to send his 
 only begotten, because most perfectly begotten Son, to earth for purposes 
 of salvation and redemption ; just such love as made the meek and lowly 
 Nazarene toilsomely bear his cross tip the stony steeps of Calvary, and 
 afterward groan and die thereon ! Surely that woman is not wholly lost, 
 who feels even a little love like this. 
 
 And so we see this woman in all her sin and misery. Is it All Right? 
 By the God of Heaven, no ; a pealing, thundering, heaven-rending NO ! 
 It can never be right for a true woman or a true man to rest contented 
 while such things be ! Society — you, sir or madam, and I, as integers 
 thereof, must work, work, to bring about a better state of things. It can 
 never be right to foster or in any way encourage the growth of such mon- 
 strous evils, as I, who champion all women, I who love the human race much 
 better than a party or a philanthropic clique, herein so feebly attempt to 
 
woman; love, and marriage. 349 
 
 outline and depict. The modern declaimers for the doctrine "Whatever 
 is is Right," could not have foreseen the fearful consequences likely to 
 arise from the enunciation of the infernal sophism. I am charitable 
 enough to believe they did not so foresee them. 
 
 Nevertheless the infectious malaria has gone out upon its soul-destroy- 
 ing mission ; and doubtless there are scores of thousands who, failing to 
 perceive the utter rottenness of the fallacy, felicitate themselves that, 
 being God's creatures, they can do no wrong, because he is at the head 
 of all human founts and springs of action, therefore everything is as it 
 ought to be. It is quite time the calumny was refuted, and the people set 
 right on this question, and if this endeavor in the right direction shall 
 have the effect of depriving this new viper of its fangs, this detestable ser- 
 pent of its sting, this asp of its poison, I shall not fail to thank God with an 
 overflowing heart. 
 
 CHAPTER XXTT, 
 
 "What good can be expected to result from a marriage igno- 
 rantly offered, and haughtily received ; and, in the end, ac- 
 cepted in doubt, and consummated in blue fire on one side, inef- 
 fable horror and disgust upon the other, — the man like as not 
 blase, the woman heartless? — and yet such are the secret records 
 of many unions now existing. There is a chance for some one 
 to make a large fortune by the exhibition of a happy married 
 pair ! — a woman who is really contented ; a man who regards 
 his wife as the best of women, and who sees in her all he possi- 
 bly wants or desires. 
 
 Things will not work well so long as the present system of 
 mutual deception between lovers prevails. Instead of clearly 
 being seen and known for what each really is, both parties, 
 after marriage, find their mates entirely, utterly, and in all 
 respects different from what was confidently anticipated : the 
 philosopher turns out a fool, the belle, a brainless doll ; and 
 both are taken in and completely done for. Very likely the 
 young husband has been a hard " case," profligate and libertine ; 
 and it not seldom happens that a girl proves to have had expe- 
 riences which had better been postponed ; and both parties are 
 dead sure to be exposed ; and then come criminations, retorts, 
 misery, and the delicate train usually following domestic explo- 
 sions. 
 
350 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAIiRlAGE. 
 
 If a man has been a licensee, his bride will not be long in 
 making that discovery, but will overlook the bad fact if he stops 
 right there ; and if he don't, she is just as certain to sense the 
 fact, and despise him for it, as that clucks will swim, whether 
 hatched by a hen or not. On the other hand, if a girl has had 
 improper experiences before she goes to the altar, that fact, no 
 matter how skilfully concealed, is sure to be discovered by the 
 party most interested, howsoever ignorant he may appear, or 
 really be. It is hard to hide a house on a hill, but no harder 
 than to impose upon any save a natural-born idiot, in the mat- 
 ter of personal probity of the nature here regarded, for the 
 story is as sure to be told, sooner or later, as that the sun 
 appears to rise and set day after day. A girl should go to her 
 husband's arms as innocent as when she left her mother's ; 
 but in these days there's a few who don't ! and there are reasons 
 for this, aside from the surface one; and among others — vio- 
 lence aside — this : A girl naturally, and alwa3's clings — even 
 though on the surface she believes she hates — intensely — to 
 the memory of him who first learned her secret, — him to whose 
 prayer she listened, him upon whose shoulder she hid her face, 
 and then — forgot her right, her dignity, and her better, nobler 
 sense of justice, honor, self-respect. That man's image is 
 burned into her memory with fire, on ground glass, and there 
 will it stay, even to the marking of her husband's children in 
 body and in mind ; for they will be sure to resemble her lover 
 even more than they do their own father ; nor can the ingrained 
 force be gotten rid of this side of the grave ; for even widow's 
 children, by a third husband, look more like number one than 
 number three ; just as the red cow, whose first calf was by a 
 brindle sire, will never have others by others who are not more 
 brindle than any other color. Now Solomon, or some one else, 
 said that every secret should be proclaimed from the house-tops, 
 and this is one of them. It is a resemblance not relished by 
 husbands, in general, these likenesses and similitudes. And 
 no woman has a right to inflict any such deep humiliations on 
 any man that breathes. And here is a man's right, that rather 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 351 
 
 supersedes the principal woman's right contended for in these 
 da}'s ! 
 
 One day, in Constantinople, the writer sat enjoying a nargileh 
 with a Turkish "friend, a man of high rank, profound knowledge, 
 and courtesy not to be surpassed. He was a Ulema, or profes- 
 sor of Mahomedan law, and we had been conversing on the 
 eternal theme of love. Said he, " Cold water creates power ; 
 stops all leakage ; sharpens man ; intensifies woman ; dispenses 
 with drugs and surgery ; prolongs the human joys ; restores the 
 youth ! This, and great care not to use the left hand too often, 
 is the secret of peace, youth, power, energy, long life ! " Truer 
 words were never uttered. [Of course the methods of the cold 
 water's application — one yet totally undreamed of in America 
 — cannot be here inserted ; but will be furnished by the author 
 hereof to physicians, and all others who want it enough to send 
 and pay for the trouble involved in preparing the information.] 
 
 All possessors of great brain-power, as is proved by history, 
 past and current, are simple and childlike, and rather easily 
 taken in and imposed upon, by people of contemptible small- 
 ness ; while pretenders to cerebral power are exactly the 
 reverse, and let slip no good chance of putting on airs, which 
 the really great man never does — and notoriously in the mat- 
 ter of dress. Just so is it with a good wife or husband. They 
 glide along smoothly, with scarce a jar or break, save an occa- 
 sional cloud, resulting from ill health, more than anything else ; 
 whereas yonr wife or husband who, to others, are eternally com- 
 plaining of how dreadful bad their mates are, and what magnifi- 
 cent paragons of perfection themselves are, will be found, if 
 the truth were known, to be — to use an expressive Yankeeism 
 ■ — exceedingly small potatoes, with very few in a hill. 
 
 The best and most loving woman on earth sometimes feels 
 like doing and saying very mean things — apparently — and 
 quarrelling, and hectoring the very man she adores and would 
 die for. She can't help it ; and the fool who takes umbrage at 
 her when she does so, isn't fit to have her at all. She does these 
 things mostly when she is preparing little heads to wear pretty 
 
352 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 tiny caps, — God bless her ! — and has a perfect right to dwell 
 in whim-land for something like two hundred and forty days — 
 while she is there, look you, sir, and let her have her way ! 
 
 Tinkers, when soldering a difficult place, usually put a line of 
 putty around it to prevent the solder from escaping. After the 
 job is done, this little bank — which is called a "tinker's dam" 
 — is destroyed because it is useless. Well, such fault-finders as 
 the above are not worth one of the dams aforesaid, so far as 
 true wifeliness and husbandage are concerned ! 
 
 If you do not love some special one, it is impossible that you 
 can love any of your fellow-creatures ! and if a married couple 
 do not love and respect each other, then they are mutually an- 
 tagonistic at heart, the upshot of which will be that one drives 
 the mate toward the divorce courts, the other to abandonment 
 or illicit love, either of which are direct roads to pandemoniums 
 all scoriae paved, with no glad brooks of rippling waters to as- 
 suage its dusty heat. 
 
 The writer of this once knew a ci-devant " philosopher" from 
 wooden-nutmegdom, who was an avowed free-lover, — general 
 lover, — and to judge by his own story, which of course was 
 all brag, a very successful one. At the same time he prided 
 himself on his ability to demonstrate the non-existence of the 
 Supreme Being. The career of that man was patiently watched 
 for years, in the confident expectation that he would one day 
 exhibit his actual moral worth as a man and member of society ; 
 nor was that expectation disappointed. A test was arranged, 
 and a good opportunity afforded him to show his true colors, 
 and it resulted that, as expected, this God-denying and God- 
 forsaken What is it, proved, beyond cavil, totalty destitute of 
 manhood and honor, principle, or anything really human except 
 the form he wore and disgraced ; for he triumphantly established 
 the fact that it was unsafe for any female, no matter what or 
 whom, to be left in his society alone, even for an hour, beyond 
 the reach of rescuing hands, strong arms, and an excellent pair 
 of boots, with approved kick qualities lodged in them. The ex- 
 perience connected with that fellow provoked a deal of anger 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 353 
 
 and of thought, and finally led the author of these pages to sin- 
 cerely doubt the possibility of any one being a true wife or hus- 
 band, who recognizes no moral accountability, and boastingly 
 declares there is no Deity. Certainly the author of this work 
 would rather God should call his daughter home before half her 
 youth was passed, than consign her to the care of such a person, 
 no matter what his external standing in society might be, or 
 how many prefixes or suffixes he might have attached to the 
 name his parents gave him. 
 
 Logic, religion, the vast story of a God all around us, are all 
 wasted on such a creature. In the smile of a child he sees no 
 heaven, and in God's master-piece — peerless woman ! — he be- 
 holds but the vehicle of his own unhallowed pleasures, and the 
 victims of his low and fiery passions. " Matter, matter, is all 
 there is," he cries ; and believes, or braggingly pretends to, that 
 death, the hard fate of a dog, awaits him. Sordidly base in all 
 things, and all the way through, he is but a two-legged clog. 
 Before the summons comes, and when it does, and such a thing 
 passes beyond our mortal ken, but few mourn for him, and his 
 passing away is indeed — " No matter ! " He was a hard case, 
 let the puppy go ! 
 
 " If that which is hoi}'," writes an unknown correspondent, 
 " be given to the dogs, they will turn and rend you. Swine 
 tread the most precious jewels under their feet." And what 
 else could a woman expect who should entrust her happiness 
 either to a free lover, a babbler of woman's confidential secrets, 
 an open braggart, and therefore liar, or to such as ignore the 
 Eternal one, and regard earth as but the mere play-ground of 
 the passions? Not much else indeed. To allow such a man to 
 enter your house, eat your food, and partake of jxmr bounty, is 
 to be rewarded by his most strenuous endeavors to debauch your 
 wives, demoralize your sons, and make shameless harlots of your 
 daughters ; for such a man has no more honor or real manhood 
 in him, than a starving tiger has compunctions of conscience 
 about making a meal off a lamb carelessly straying by his lair ! 
 
 Like the correspondent above referred to, — almost his very 
 words are quoted, — the writer of these volumes is — "a mystic, 
 
354 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARMAGE. 
 
 believing we are all propelled by a wondrous and unimaginable 
 destiny — which is the Will of God ! — that we are all the off- 
 spring of the Eternal Potency ; that the human soul is The 
 Self, and has powers, functions, attributes, of which we know 
 little. Holding nothing too sacred to learn, and regarding every 
 affection, passion even, to be sacred, and not to be thought of 
 without respect, it follows, in the loftier and holier sense, that 
 love is its own law, and wisdom its existere and manifestation ; 
 and that true love makes us Godlike and divine, partakers of 
 the divine nature, pure from sin, holy, true men and priests of 
 the most high God ! " 
 
 None of this can be to him who says, " There is no God !" 
 He is really shut out from all the holier and sublime sections of 
 nature and human nature. He knows, realizes, actualizes, noth- 
 ing whatever of spirit, because he worships his nerves ; or of 
 soul, because he has a soul-case, and but a tiny jewel inside of 
 it. Incapable of love, he is but a sensationalist, and worships 
 appetite as drunkards do their drink. Friendship ! he knows 
 nothing of the divine meanings of the sacred principle. 
 
 Says a scrap of paper on the desk : " Of all the blessings 
 that gladden our earthly pilgrimage, sympathy is the sweetest ; 
 of all the gifts of God, a friend is the chief. The man of 
 science has his associates ; the man of crime his accomplice ; 
 the man of pleasure his companion ; and in all these there is 
 sympathy, but not friendship ; that comprehends an enduring 
 affection resting on sj'mpathy ; it cannot endure if built on the 
 things that are passing away, or that shall be burned up." Of 
 this, such a man knows nothing, because too wrapped up in his 
 contracted selfishness. 
 
 H. W. Beecher says : " He who knows how to make per- 
 sons around him, wherever he goes, happy ; he who knows how 
 to do it in the morning and noon and night ; he who knows how 
 to make love his uniform disposition ; he who knows how to 
 radiate sympathy, and gentleness, and kindness, and forbear- 
 ance, and patience towards others, and to make men feel richer 
 for his having been with them, — he has the crucial test of 
 piety." But an atheistical, or any other sprt of libertine, has 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAIIRTAGE. 355 
 
 none of the elements of manhood, therefore, of happiness in 
 him ; he cannot give others what he has not himself. His brains 
 are iron, his soul a mass of ice ; his principles doggish, as re- 
 spects the dog's baser, not his higher nature ! — and his passions 
 are lurid flames, his appetites low, gross, sensual, and the wom- 
 an who suffers such a man to even touch her hand becomes 
 defiled beyond the cleansing power of soap and water } Shun 
 him ! He is a stalking pestilence ! 
 
 It is extremely bad for any one, male or female, — but far 
 worse for a woman than a man, because she has fewer dis- 
 tractive resources, — to fix the heart's hopes upon one who is in- 
 capable of any fair or just degree of appreciation, — one who 
 can see nothing higher, purer, better, nobler — more human — 
 than the mere utilities of wedded life. God pity him or her 
 who, having a mind, and acute sensibilities ; who loves art, 
 music, and all that is good and fine, but who is yoked to a dull 
 log, which never gives forth a spark of fire, save the dull red, 
 consuming flames of animal passion. " My God, it is dread- 
 ful ! " all true people cry. Oh, this false trap ! How many have 
 been led into it, only to be cruelized, to starve, and moan, and 
 daily, hourly die, and the victims are not all females either ! 
 
 It is very hard, and none but those who have been there — 
 legions of them — can form even half an idea of the awful fall- 
 ingness of a soul thus circumstanced. Death, even torturous 
 death, though terrible, may be met by a call on courage ; but to 
 die regularly, day after day, and keep it up, as many do, is a 
 refinement of hardship compared to which dissolution itself 
 were mere child's play. 
 
 The horror of horrors, in this life, is to be compelled to en- 
 dure that anguish — for all other agonies and accidents sink 
 into comparative insignificance, when contrasted with or meas- 
 ured by a bad marriage ! 
 
 On the contrary, the supreme bliss of blisses is to be a direct 
 partaker of the joys of true wife and husband — ay ! and 
 mighty few there be who linger for long in that transcendently 
 Happy Valley of Delights ! 
 
 A woman must be admired by the man she wifes. It is her 
 
356 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 due. Let her be so or else she pules, mopes, fades — in her 
 heart, if not in her conduct and cheeks. If she lives at all, she 
 cannot endure neglect. It is an icy-cold, ever-freezing, rack- 
 ing death ; and he who fails to render her just tribute, not only 
 injures her, and chokes her love to death, but is also a first-class 
 idiot, bent upon conjugal suicide, — straight as a string ! 
 
 But it is in a woman's power to make any man, and especially 
 her husband, admire her. Try the finesse and extras of dress, 
 — both in full costume and when alone with him, O wife ! and 
 if you play that card well, it will bring him to terms twelve 
 times in every dozen trials ; for there is a magic in dress which, 
 well worked, is irresistible, even to the palled and jaded natures 
 of the most obstinate or careless man alive. 
 
 If there's one thing, short of crime, worse than another, it is 
 a snoop, — one who continually pokes his or her — mostly her 
 — nose into other people's affairs. Such persons are a curse to 
 the neighborhoods where they live, and cause more trouble be- 
 tween men and their wives than their necks are worth. 
 
 There's one or two snoops — if not more, in New England — 
 or snoopdom ! — and there's as many as one, if not more, reader, 
 within gunshot of where you are reading these identical lines — 
 Mrs. — and the old maid — , and — Duck them if you get a 
 good chance I That's all. 
 
 The various stages of a lover's career, with reference to the 
 imperial she, is : ideal, idyl, idol, at which point he marries her, 
 and she becomes idle — and he wakes up some fine morning and 
 finds himself an idiot ! 
 
 People who love are slow to grow old, because love is the 
 real elixir of life and water of perpetual youth. 
 
 But husbands, as well as wives, are subject to the same law ; 
 and he who is careful of, and neat in, his personal appearance 
 has control of a most effective key to woman's heart, and al- 
 though slovenliness characterizes genius and great talent, not 
 every man can afford to imitate it. But no man exists who is 
 not more of a man, and the object of more respect, well dressed, 
 than not so. 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAItRIAGE. 357 
 
 The inner life of a neglected wife ! the poor thing ! The 
 social drudge of a wandering, tying, club-tending, doubly mean 
 thing ! God pity and help her, for her sufferings tongue can 
 never tell. She who in her jo3*ous trust gave her all to him, 
 who, having worn the roses from her cheek, and the hope from 
 her heart, basely leaves her alone, half the year ; never takes 
 her out in the green fields to hear the birds sing, or to tread the 
 flowerj' fields, or to a place of amusement ; but, instead of 
 that, grumbles and growls at her all the time, and — then trots 
 off for pleasure along with an}- other woman he can find who 
 is willing to let him disburse his money for her — is too mean 
 to eat good victuals ! And there are more just such husbands 
 everywhere than 3*011 could shake a stick at in a month of Sun- 
 days : more's the shame. 
 
 The Christs are not all dead ! They still live ! "Where shall 
 you look for them ? Look everywhere where wives exist ! Do they 
 not suffer crucifixions, buffetings, insults innumerable ? and do 
 the}' not pray Father forgive them — these counterfeit men ! 
 these sham husbands! — for they know not what they do!' 
 Were not these wives swindled by gilded baits, labelled Hope 
 — into hell — when they bargained for its opposites ? No ! the 
 Christs are not all dead ! 
 
 "Will the absurd and villanous doctrines now so rife in the 
 land, under the names of Reform, Woman's Rightism, or any 
 other disastrous s}*stem of social iconoclasm, remedy the evils 
 under which the world at home labors to-day? What are such 
 new lights worth when their leader is arrested for rape on a child 
 of eleven 3-ears? Oh, this accursed reformatory raff! this rot- 
 ten drift-wood on the social and the mental sea ! Would there 
 were a Niagara over which the}- all might plunge into the bot- 
 tomless abysm of eternal Night ! 
 
 These "reformers" scatter their demoralizing books and 
 papers far and wide, poisoning the minds of millions, and des- 
 olating homes by annual thousands. Woman's rights won't 
 make home happy, depend upon it. Nothing but right down 
 earnest TRY will do that! Husband, instead of mixing more 
 
358 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 gall in j'our wife's cup, ask j-ourself if you have done all you 
 could to make things run smoother and better. If you have 
 not, go about it before you're an hour older. Wean her from 
 the morbid contemptation of her misery, fancied or real. First 
 try to make her believe she is the happiest wife alive — and 
 make her so ! Don't forget that silks are an excellent cure for 
 the sulks ; nor that when a man is stung with the rattlesnake 
 of jealousy, or any other domestic damnativeness, it often takes 
 five men and himself to drink whiskey enough to — not cure 
 him — but to allay the pangs — and that none but fools do any- 
 thing of the sort. Whiskey ! Would that every gallon of it, 
 and every other intoxicant on the globe, were freighted by ex- 
 press, lightning motored, back to hell from whence they came ! 
 
 It is impossible to be wholly good without loving ; it is im- 
 possible to love and be wholly bad. 
 
 John Hat — God bless him ! — writing in " Harper's Weekly " 
 on the imperishable topic, woman's love, tells certain terrible 
 truths against — men — and equally true ones of true women : 
 Read — and, if } r ou be a man, go thy way and sin no more: — 
 
 " A sentinel angel, sitting high in glory, 
 Heard this shrill wailing out from purgatory! 
 ' Have mercy, mighty angel ! hear my story. 
 
 " ' I loved, and, blind with passionate love, I fell ; 
 Love brought me down to death, and death to hell} 
 For God is just, and death for sin is well. 
 
 " ' I do not rage against His high decree, 
 i Not for myself to ask that grace shall be, 
 But for my love on earth, who mourns for me. 
 
 " ' Great spirit, let me see my love again, 
 And comfort him one hour, and I would fain 
 To pay a thousand years of fire and pain.' 
 
 " Then said the pitying angel : ' Nay, repent 
 That wild vow ; look ! the dial-finger is bent 
 Down to the last hour of thy punishment.' 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 359 
 
 " But still she wailed : ' I pray thee, let me go ; 
 I cannot rise to peace and leave him so ! 
 Oh, let me sooth him in his hitter woe ! ' 
 
 " The brazen gates ground suddenly ajar, 
 And upward joyous, like arising star, 
 She rose, and vanished in the ether far. 
 
 " But soon adown the dying sunset sailing, 
 And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing, 
 She fluttered back with broken-hearted wailing. 
 
 " She sobbed : ' I found him by the summer sea 
 Beclining his head upon a maiden's knee ; 
 She curled his hair and kissed him. "Woe is me 1 * 
 
 " She wept : ' Now let my punishment begin; 
 I have been fond and foolish. Let me in 
 To expiate my sorrow and my sin.' 
 
 " The angel answered: ' Nay, sad soul, go higher! 
 To be deceived in your true heart's desire, 
 Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire ! ' " 
 
 A happy woman never writes a book ! nor can a happy man ! 
 It is only when the soul feels its wings scorched that it realizes 
 its power to fly ; and the more dreadful the burning, the higher 
 its flight ! But if the soul be crushed beneath an overwhelming 
 load, only then can its true soug burst forth in all its wild weird 
 power ! — and only then can the world find out what's in a wo- 
 man or a man, and what every human being has, but is niainly 
 unconscious of — heart, soul, feeling, pit}', tenderness and 
 brave resolve to look higher and do better. This is one of the 
 missions of sorrow to the world ! 
 
 "You Christians call yourselves civilized," said a savage to a 
 sailor. "Prove it." — "I can: In the first place we have 
 churches." — " Where a poor man dare not show his face," re- 
 marked the savage. " Don't interrupt me," said the sailor. 
 " We have jails," — Where }*ou put a poor man who is unable 
 
360 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 to pay his honest debts ! " observed the barbarian. " We 
 have large manufactories." — "Where you make compounds to 
 kill your-fellow men's bodies, and rum to ruin their souls ! " 
 said the' savage, " Rum, to make him mad, crazy, raving, 
 furious, demoniac, — a murderer ! " — and this j'ou call the 
 Golden Rule ! Then you build gibbets on which to strangle 
 them to death, laying all the blame of the wrong, if wrong 
 there be, upon your Christian God, not where it rightfully 
 belongs — yourselves. Christian, I was once taken to your 
 country, and carried about as a show for a time ; and thousands 
 paid gold for a sight of a ' Savage.' Presently your priests 
 loaded a ship for me, with beads, bibles, and blankets, powder, 
 gin, and guns, to trade with in savage land ! But before I 
 returned they dressed me up in Christian garb, that I might go 
 about seeing, instead of being seen ; and one night I beheld 
 new evidences of 3 r our high culture, one of which were gam- 
 bling shops ; another, a gilded brothel, where young girls bar- 
 tered their beauty for jingling silver ! Next day I saw the pot- 
 ters' field where they buried them when dead. Christian, I pre- 
 fer to remain, a savage ! " 
 
 All young creatures, man included, run to passion and love, 
 and to their extremes and abuses. So do villages, cities, towns, 
 and nations. Our own nation is young, and is therefore fris- 
 kier, and more unsettled in love affairs than any other on God's 
 green earth. When creatures and man grow older, they correct 
 that folly, and so will nations ; hence, in a century or two, 
 America will have a little common sense, and more decency ! 
 
 " Daughter, I hear bad news of you, — that Sam Wilson was 
 seen to look under your bonnet, and kiss you, right close to 
 Fera's confectionery ! What did you allow such goings-on for ? 
 What did you do?" 
 
 4 ' Me ? Why 1 screamed ! ^ 
 
 Big Sister. — " How often ?£' 
 
 She. — " Three times ! " 
 
 B. S. — " What kinds ?# 
 
WOMAN) LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 361 
 
 Little Brother. — "I know : vanilla and lemon — 'cos I 
 seed 'em ! " 
 
 Mother. — Good gracious ! what are you talking about ? " 
 
 Omnes. — " Ice cream ! " 
 
 During his strangely varied career, the author has had thou- 
 sands of applications from persons desirous of learning his 
 secret of medical practice, and others, relating to mind, morals, 
 and the affections ; but most of them were based upon the plea 
 that the applicants were solely desirous of " aiding suffering 
 humanity," which was all bosh. They wanted to help them- 
 selves to success, competence, honor, fame and glory, but had 
 not frankness enough to say so. Now, whenever people urged 
 that plea, he always suspected the presence of a selfish " mice," 
 and refused to allow them to grind their axes after that style ; 
 but whenever a person said, " I want to learn, so as to benefit 
 myself as well as others," the required information was cheer- 
 fully given ; for the author always did, and ever will, doubt the 
 motives of professional world-savers, who blazon " Suffering 
 Humanity" as a motto upon the banners of their action. 
 
 It is a very pleasant sight to see, and a far pleasanter sensa- 
 tion to feel and know, that your wife freely gives up all, to fol- 
 low and share the fortunes of you, her husband. But when 
 she gives up all, and you included, to follow the fortunes of 
 another fellow, it is not quite so pleasant a sight to see ; while 
 as for the feeling, that is, of course, quite delicious and exhil- 
 arating — only it isn't. 
 
 Reader, allow an introduction to a preacher of the hard-shell 
 persuasion, — a supposititious one, perhaps, but as genuine as 
 any other of the sort. He is going to preach a sermon : — 
 
 Bretheeing and Sisters — especially the sisters — attend to 
 what is goin' to be said ! The animiles once went out for to 
 fight. The shaggy and uproarious bar was thar, likewise the 
 lion and the unicorn, which is a one-horned animile, and quite 
 as dangerous as if he had two, or more, for I've knowed many 
 a good man come to grief through a single horn, — case horns 
 
362 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 is bad things to play with, seeing's yer don't know what the 
 effecks may be, till you've tried. The elephant was thar, as 
 also was the horn-bug, tiger, giraffe, the Irvpopo-taine-us, and all 
 the other beasts were thar, from the mastodon clown to the least- 
 est one of all. They was on a big prairie, with a few trees 
 here and thar, on which sat the eagles, the robins and the owl- 
 ingales, which they had been appointed judges of the fight, 
 what was going for to come off right onto that there spot. And 
 the beasts they formed a ring, — and when all was ready, the 
 eagle he gin a scream, and the lion and the tiger they pitched 
 in, and fout, and fout, till thar wasn't a grease-spot left of 
 eyther, after which the rhino-serious and the snappin-turkle 
 they had a tussle, and the latter he come off first-best, case he 
 got sich a holt on to that thar upper lip of that thar rhinose- 
 rious, as to cause him to gently murmur ; Now I lay me down to 
 sleep, and then git up and git like unto a quarter horse close 
 to hum ! And then the alligator allegated to the effeck that he 
 could just clean out anything around thar, which alligations 
 the anaconda he denied, and said he'd see his pile on it, and go 
 him suthin better, — and he did ; case he hugged that varmint 
 till his eyes they stuck out like four peeled ingions, and the 
 snake he raked the board ; and then the wild bull and the cata- 
 mount they went in, and come out agin, both of 'em badly 
 licked, and worse skeered. Presently the unicorn and the gnu 
 they sounded thar horns — and took one — and they guv out a 
 defy, to the effeck that any one thar what had any conceit in 'em 
 and wanted to substantiate it or get it took out'n 'em, — any one 
 what wanted for to fight, mout enter into the covenant immedi- 
 ently ; for there was a little inseck present what wanted some 
 one to knock a chip offn his shoulder, — not if they would, but. 
 if they dared ; his arms was a lance, and he wore a yaller 
 jacket, and though he was small, yet he considered his self 
 some — in a free and easy fight ; his ordinary heft wasn't more'n 
 three kernels o' corn, yet when he got right smart mad, he 
 weighed consid'rable more'n two tons, and he had come -out for 
 to fight ! 
 
 He was a vain and a sassy cuss, and his name which it was 
 
WOMAK, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 363 
 
 hor-nett; and he avouched that, as for him, he didn't care a mill- 
 dam, or any other sort, for any fish what trod the land, or 
 beast what swum the sea ; and he'd bet high that thar was 
 nothing on the ground as could take his measure, or knock him 
 out'n time ! Wharfor and tharfor, hear ye ! hear ye ! and O 
 yes ! and all you who wants to bet, or try your luck with that 
 thar little jokin' cuss, you just put up your stamps, and sail, 
 in ; and when you do, may suthin have mercy on you, for that 
 there little individual wont I — you may bet high on that ! " 
 
 With this, the heralds they dried up, and out came the sassy 
 little winged bug ; and he flopped his wings, he did ; and he 
 made faces at the crowd, after which he proceeded to run out 
 his stinger, and then he remarked, "How is that for high?" 
 which caused the elephant to snicker right out, and shake his 
 sides with laughin' ; while the hipopotamus he smole clean across 
 his rather open countenance, at the perfectly ridiculous idea of 
 any one being afraid to fight a inseck so small as that. But 
 alas ! they hadn't not no idee of what a awful sight of ruin is 
 contained in a hor-nett's tail ; for it biteth like a serpent, and it 
 stingeth worsern two adders, you bet ! case your preacher's 
 bin thar, and he don't intend to go any more — bless the Lord! 
 and amen ! and so mote it be ! A bee's stinger is some, a wasp's 
 is somer, but a hor-nett's is som-est, and considerabul worser'n 
 airything 3'ou ever got a hold of, and the more you just git up 
 and git from an}>- locality where they're around, the better'll it 
 be for your piece of mind! — that's all, and that's enough; 
 when }^ou make a right calkelation ; and come to see the pint ; 
 which you don't, and can't till you learn what befell those ani- 
 miles what went out for to fight ! 
 
 But the elephant he got laughed at, and he got mad, and he 
 thought he could go for that thar hornet, and come out all 
 O K ; but a more mistaken individual you never clapped eyes 
 on. Brethering, no one ever yet went for that sort of animile 
 what didn't come out second best ! But the stamps was up ; 
 the horns they sounded ; and the combatants they made a dash 
 for each other, and both missed. Then the elephant he got mad, 
 and he lifted up his trunk and he sailed in ! — and he sailed out 
 
364 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 agin in a awful hurry ; for while his snoot was in the air, the 
 bug he just dropped into it ; and he crawled, and he crawled 
 right square up that elephant's trunk clean up to the top of it, 
 close by a tender spot right in Mister Elephant's head ; and 
 when thar he nipped hold of one soft place with his hands and 
 mouth, so's he could have a clear swing with his tail, — which 
 he did ! and he got, and he bent, and he surged, and he gave 
 that elephant hail Columby right straight along so's to make that 
 refined and cultured animile use the worstest and most profanest 
 kind of language that ever fell from the lips of any educated 
 elephant before or since ; and he actually swore after his style, 
 and he wiggled, and he flopped, and he kicked with all four 
 feet ; but it was all of no use, for the hornett had him tight, just 
 as before, and since ; which occasioned him to observe that, 
 in fact, he'd be d — d, somethinged, if he could stand that sort of 
 thing much longer, he'd bet high on that ! As for the rest 
 of the beasts what went out for to fight, they liked the sport 
 hugely, and nearly split theirselves with laughing, — it's so easy 
 and agreeable to laugh at others, you know ! — but they really 
 couldn't help it, for his motions were quite absurd ; and they 
 hollered, and they 3 r elled, " Go it, flop-ears ! go it hor- 
 nett ! " which the former couldn't appreciate, because he was 
 so busy dancing ; besides which he was taken suddenly ill with 
 a dangerous bowel complaint, and he hadn't not no time to con- 
 sult a doctor or take any medicine whatsomever, even if it had 
 been offered to him then and thar ! 
 
 And he got sick, and he was under the weather, he was ; be- 
 cause he went into that there fight with both of his eyes tight 
 shet ; but he came out of it with those identical eyes wide open, 
 — he did ! and he found out that a horneW was a double patent 
 compound mitrailleuse, — silver-mounted, not of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven — and a breech-loader at that — of the very worstest 
 kind ! Bless the Lord ! — and he went in to win, and he came 
 out just like a spaniel dog what's been stealing and got 
 kicked, and sneaks off to hide his shame ! You know how it is 
 yourself ! 
 
 At last he roared " Enough ! " whereupon the yaller-colored 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 365 
 
 champion came out, and he got on a leaf, and he observed that 
 it was quite early in the daj r , and as he hadn't got fairly warmed 
 up j-et, he'd like to try some of the rest, who felt like treading 
 on the tail of his coat. But no one saw fit to take his defy. As 
 for his late antagonist in the recent unpleasantness, he packed 
 up his trunk and left by express. But the hornett he felt so 
 good that he flew among the laughing crowd and touched 'em 
 up, under their eyes and other tender places, until the entire 
 crowd what went out for to fight concluded that the weather 
 was too sultry thareabouts, and they left. As soon as the last 
 one was gone, the hornett was jubilant ; and he buzzed, and he 
 rolled on the grass, and he fout his battles over again in imagi- 
 nation, till at last he stuck his stinger right into his own eye, 
 and he keeled up and died right then and thar ! 
 
 Sisters, thar's a moral to this fable. Hornett-izing don't pay 
 in the long run ; case the wielder of the weapon is sure to sting 
 herself to death ! 
 
 Brethering, beware of all insects — especially the Zior-NETTS ! 
 — but you needn't always spell it in that thar way ! " 
 
 It is a very singular fact of the human heart, best illustrated 
 by a case in point, that if she, or he, becomes jealous of him 
 or her, and subsequently finds out that there was no ground 
 whatever for it, yet nevertheless the love he or she previously 
 bore her or him becomes weakened, and never again can be 
 what it was before, no matter how fulty the judgment may 
 acquit the suspected. Every adverse emotion of the human 
 being weakens those which are normal ; so let lovers beware, 
 and the married as well. 
 
 Few widows now die of grief for their loss. They some- 
 times faint, but generally come two — if not three ! While as 
 for widowers, no matter how severe the stroke may be, it is 
 seldom fatal, and most of them, in a short time, manage to re- 
 wive. Plenty , nearby all women, like to be and want to be loved 
 right straight from a man's soul, yet comparatively few of them 
 are capable of inspiring just what they do want, or of retaining 
 
366 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 it when they have won it, if they win it. Especially is this 
 true in the American East. 
 
 The benign and softening influence of a good woman, with 
 courage to deftly try, and pluckily persevere, will transform 
 even a tiger man, in time, to the perfect similitude of, and 
 afterward into the real state of a gentleman, in every sense of 
 the word. It only needs persistence. 
 
 Men are apt to yield to a single temptation, under the idea 
 that " once don't count much " ! So are some women. But just 
 as sure as that death shall claim us in the end, will every 
 single experiment in license be certain to prove a dead failure ; 
 because it loosens one's hold on the good and true ; and rup- 
 tures the strands of the mystic cord which binds the soul to 
 honor and to virtue. Loveless passion leads to the deeps : love- 
 passion leads to heaven. But if deteriorated it effeminates the 
 man ; leads to social brigandage ; debases woman ; snatches 
 the crown bf corruscant glories from her brow ; bans both man 
 and wife from thereafter sailing over the silvery seas of dear, 
 because virtuous, delight, and substitutes a murky tide in its 
 place. Instead of basking in the ineffable smiles of the virtue- 
 crowning God, they grovel amid the baleful odors steaming 
 from the pit. 
 
 "When a man forgets to honor the sex of his mother, — as some 
 do at sight of the most sacred spectacle on earth, a pregnant 
 woman ! — that very instant the manly glory that ought to radiate 
 from the head and face of one who feels allied to greatness and 
 to God, passes from his presence and beyond his utmost reach 
 in this life, and until he and we shall 
 
 " meet and greet in closing ranks, 
 
 In Time's declining sun, 
 When the bugles of God shall sound recall, 
 Arid the battles of life are won." 
 
 No man can honor his mother, who belittles or victimizes 
 her sex. The two things are incompatible, and wholly impos- 
 sible in the same individual. No good can come out of any 
 garden where such things grow ; where flourishes disrespect, or 
 
WOMAN, LOVE) AND MARRIAGE. 3C7 
 
 light-thinking about woman, but only ill weeds, and noisome 
 vermin in human shape — people who deal in high-sounding, un- 
 meaning rhapsody, and pseudo-philosophical rhodomontade, 
 wherewith to stultify the public conscience, gull the people of 
 their monej', and gratify the morbid tastes of those long lost to 
 decency, respect, and virtuous society. 
 
 It has been said, widely believed and scarce ever denied, that 
 many a woman has taken a step called infamous, purposely, 
 yet inspired by the highest, holiest and purest virtue, — the de- 
 sire of maternity. It may be so, but the writer takes leave 
 to doubt it. At all events it is an unsafe principle to adopt ; 
 and she who does it may be a virtuous woman, but it is not a 
 proposition very easily accepted by him — or an}- other man. 
 
 Incessant petting and incessant passion are alike distasteful 
 to sensible people of either gender. It is possible to give either 
 an overdose of " duckej's," "sweets," "darlings," and such- 
 like toy names. Enough is as good as a feast. Too much of 
 a good thing clogs the taste and spoils the appetite. "We want 
 talk, mind, brains — something else beside an eternal round of 
 sugared phrases, honeyed words, and endearing expressions. Let 
 them be the condiments and seasoning, not the staple food of 
 life ; for they beget an affectional dyspepsia exceedingly hard 
 to cure. 
 
 Beware of a woman, O man, whose care and love for you 
 depends upon your ability to gratify her whims, tastes, appe- 
 tites and passions. Do not trust her too far, or confide in her 
 too much. 
 
 It is perfectly safe to say that no man can trust a woman 
 who deceives her husband for your sake, — if you be a man ; 
 for she who will do that, will not scruple or hesitate to deceive 
 you in turn, for whatever other man may chance to take her 
 fancy ; and she will just as readily sell you as she did the man 
 she calls husband, and who fancies her to be true. 
 
 Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, is the rule in love-law. 
 
 Said the old grajdiead : " Water is a good thing — to wash 
 in, and for — navigation purposes; but for a steady drink 
 give me rum." And so, too, a husband delights in the loving 
 
3G8 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 inanities of a fond wife ; but not as a steady diet ; they 
 bring on affectional dyspepsia ! 
 
 If he loves her : 
 
 If she loves him : 
 
 He: 
 
 She: 
 
 Is immeasurably more than ten thousand worlds like this, 
 with all its wealth and honors, to each other ! 
 
 If they come together wrong ! 
 
 She: 
 
 He: 
 
 First makes Heaven, 
 
 Then Hell, 
 
 For each other. 
 
 This is the old, old story ! 
 
 The worst of love-matters in these days is that people who 
 ought to court to understand each other, do so to fool each other 
 instead, and succeed to a dot ! Marriage is not proposed coolly, 
 but is offered and accepted when both are in a magnetic fever 
 of excitement. The man trembling from wrong causes, says 
 "Will you?" and she, pale with the pallor of passion, assents. 
 What wonder then, that in less than six months both can sit 
 under the same roof and write letters from hell to their several 
 friends? Not much ! Life is at best a series of expectations. 
 We never quite reach the goal we seek, — the kiss might be just 
 a little warmer, the candy just a bit sweeter ; and instead of en- 
 joying what's before us, we envy Mr. Some One's meal, while 
 that person daily damns his lot and imagines we are the favored 
 ones, not him. All our quantities vanish ; all our equations are 
 broken — a way God has of making us lose sight of Now, and 
 walk and toil toward Then ! 
 
 Not until we all realize absolute personal responsibility for our 
 voluntary acts prepense, — that somewhere, before some tribunal, 
 above and beyond those of man, the court of last resort, — and 
 are guided by that realization, will we keep our hands off others' 
 goods and do as we'd be done by. The world boasts much of 
 its progress and liberalism. The former it may well be proud 
 
WOMAN) LOVE) AND MARRIAGE. 369 
 
 of, but unmistakably the latter has corrupted the entirety of 
 human morals ; and they who know the most have least con- 
 science in very many cases ; not because of knowledge, but that 
 they know too much for humility, too little for the higher life ; 
 too far from human law and not near enough to God's ! Not 
 till every one of us strives to get on, have honor, and be honest, 
 will the ultraistic abominations of the age be relegated to the 
 past, and the horrid phantom of false philosophy, touched with 
 the spear of Ithuriel, double itself up and vanish forever and 
 evermore from the fair face of earth ; not till then will the 
 enormous load of disconsolateness, now weighing so heavily on 
 us all, be uplifted from our shoulders and then cast down to 
 never oppress us again ; and all of us know, as we should and 
 yet shall, that he or she who dishonors, makes light of, or aims 
 a blow at marriage, or rudely innovates upon, or invades its 
 sanctities, is a public enemy ; should be treated as such, else 
 entirely ostracized and cut off from all good society, debarred 
 all fair and clean distinction in the world of men and women, 
 because he or she is their foe, who, instead of assisting poor, 
 weak and lame humanity to walk erect and be strong, — that is, 
 Virtuous, in its long and wearisome march from Bad to Better, 
 — are continually and desperately engaged in trying to thwart 
 the purposes of the Supreme Parent, by throwing impedimenta 
 and obstructions among the cog-wheels of the grand social 
 machinery, which is a crime and conspirac}' against all 
 human kind the wide world over ; and he or she who does it — 
 and their name is Radical, and their number Legion — raises 
 the black flag and declares him or herself a universal pirate and 
 social brigand, and therefore deserves a pirate's and a brigand's 
 punishment and fate ! 
 
 Besides being the enemy of the race, a radical is his or her 
 own worst foe, because he or she vainly seeks for their promised 
 joys and blisses, and only succeed in gaining a firm foothold 
 in the dark and humiliating valley of Unrest. Their theory 
 and system is founded on a chimera, a mere unsubstantial shadow. 
 How can it be otherwise, when, ignoring divinity they banish 
 Providence and have no God to lean on ? It drives us all out 
 
370 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 upon the bleak waste of nothingism, — emptiness ; vacuity,— 
 wrecks us on the sharp rocks of domestic desolation ; strangles 
 home love ; whets its appetite in quivering flesh ; fosters, en- 
 courages and justifies elopements, desertions and abortion ; 
 sets a premium on infant murder, and promotes adultery on 
 every hand ; it forces an outer life upon us, and shuts the 
 door of the inner, higher and better ; it arrays kith and kin, 
 parent and child, wife and husband, in deadly and hopeless an- 
 tagonism with each other, and declares open war against the 
 human race — themselves included. It dooms us to isolation, 
 loneliness, desolation, forces us to eat our own hearts, and 
 dwell among unsubstantial mockeries and phantoms of happi- 
 ness, while the reality is afar off; for there can be no real com- 
 panionship in radicalism or lust, its legitimate and inevitable 
 product, — because its nature is wholly onesided and selfish. 
 Its champions and its adherents disagree, and perpetual war, 
 slander, vituperation and hatred, mark their intercourse with 
 one another, and they can no more stand together than can the 
 imps of Eblis. 
 
 It sinks us down to bestial hells, and bars the gates of heaven 
 in our faces ; and no sooner do we enter the sphere of outre- 
 isms, take whatever name or form they may, than the lofty 
 angels take their flight ; and the virtues, no longer piping dul- 
 cet melodies to and in the sanctums of our souls, frightened 
 and shocked, quit us, and the coarse, dark tribes swarm in, and 
 rack us with the harsh gratings of filing saws, and the omi- 
 nous hootings of the owls of social night. Our eyes, no longer 
 open to the better and softer light of heaven, are blinded by the 
 infernal glare of ignus fatui, which lure us into the pitfalls 
 and murky swamps, and sink us neck-deep in the quick black 
 mire of wretchedness and heart-woe, and so inextricably that 
 unless we cry up to Him in our fearful agony, who alone can 
 stretch forth his hand to save us, we are lost, lost, lost ! 
 
 He or she who shamefacedly or brazenly ignores marriage 
 and its sacred obligations and responsibilities, can never be- 
 hold or realize the ineffable beatitudes of that mystical domes- 
 
WOMANy LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 871 
 
 tic heaven, whose existence depends upon the interfusion and 
 blending of two fond and loving hearts, — two united souls. 
 But there comes a retributive time to them, after the showers 
 of passion have ceased to fall, and when the sun of truth shines 
 out upon them. Then they would give all the world had their 
 lives not been so false. 
 
 To the married and the careless, what bitter regrets await 
 them too ! They, who have not thoroughly tried to better their 
 domestic state ; discontented husbands, and wretched wives, 
 from whose lips daily goes up to heaven the sad, sad wail of 
 lacerated hearts — " My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me ? " while salt and bitters tears fall like wintry rain from his, 
 but mostly from her eyes, who has asked for bread and been 
 given a stone ! — who has bestowed a heart and reaped horror, 
 grief and wan despair — oh, how inexpressible, intense, acute 
 and dreadful ! What measure can hold the bitterness raging in 
 an unloved husband's heart ! What line can sound the awful gulfs 
 of woe in the sad and mourning soul of an unloved wife — a 
 gulf of misery ten thousand fathoms deep ! Well may such — 
 either of them, clasp their hands over throbbing temples and 
 breaking hearts, as, looking up to God, they cry : " Father, 
 Father, let this bitter cup pass from me ! " 
 
 Note. — During many years, the author devoted all his energies, in a 
 medical point of view, to the treatment of those ailments of both sexes, old 
 and young, which spring from perverted, morbid, repressed affection and 
 passion, with a success all the more marked, for that he treated them from 
 a magnetic and dynamic point of view. He has now, measurably, retired 
 from practice, and designed to say nothing herein on the medical side of 
 the question, until numerous correspondents, and former patients, learn- 
 ing that a new work was issuing from his pen, insisted that it was a duty 
 to still counsel, advise, and assist such sufferers from inverted and per- 
 verted love. He therefore consents to advise in those special cases affecting 
 the brain, stomach, and vital apparatus of either sex, whether from ner- 
 vous prostration, vampire depletion, excess, or the reactions of thwarted 
 or perverted love upon the bodily health, incipient insanity, morbid action 
 of the mind, gloom,, suicidal despondency , mania, and the distressing cat- 
 alogue of ills peculiar to women, married and single, as well as the corre- 
 spondent ills of males. He wishes it, however, to be distinctly understood 
 
3 72 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAliltlAGE. 
 
 that he has abandoned general practice, and will only act in cases where 
 hope is gone, and only death or madness Zoom up in the near future. His 
 address will be Boston, Mass., care of Randolph Publishing Co. All 
 such correspondence must be marked " Private J" 
 
 Love, iu reality, is the miraculous finding and recognition of 
 the higher and better part of yourself in another, and both 
 parts mutually making the discovery, and fusing, blending, 
 mingling into an inseparable oneness ; then follows the thrill ! 
 — and this is love ! It is a burst of sunlight through a storm- 
 charged cloud. The loved one is all the world to thee, and all 
 the rest, all the universal existence outside, has but a represent- 
 ative value. Let it be disturbed, and you are haunted by an 
 intangible horror, forever breathing its chilliness upon you, for- 
 ever assuming shapes which are but varied formlessness, and 
 elude your every attempt to grasp hold, or even define them. 
 Let even the fear of its loss assail you, and straightway your 
 very soul is tossed upon the stormy waters, and you, like the 
 frail bark, are dashed hither and yon in the resistless vortex of 
 the whirlpool ; your steadiness, because your anchor of hope, is 
 gone. The love-light fades from j'our eye, and quiet from your 
 heart, and both give place to the restless, wild tumult of the 
 mad Bacchante. "We are told that when things reach their 
 worst they begin to mend ; but it is seldom so with those whose 
 love is blighted. God grant it may be so, — may mend when the 
 dark pall hangs heavily on those whom sweet love so cruelly 
 stabs at times ! Heaven help us ! How the heart-reft do suf- 
 fer ! nor can earth, or philosophj' appease the anguish — only 
 God can then assuage the dreadful. w.oe ! 
 
WOMAN; LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. S7S 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Almost done ! Arduous, yet blessed, and delightful task, 
 because undertaken for, and executed in, the best interests of 
 human kind. True, there are some sharp words herein, but 
 those to whom they were applied knew better than to deserve 
 them ; besides which there are those who must needs be 
 exposed and driven, because they cannot be led. And now this 
 highest and holjest work, and purpose of the current year of the 
 lonely, yet not lonely, life of him who, for the ends sought to be 
 reached in this book, has hitherto hidden his identity behind a 
 sound, and that sound, Casca Llanna, or the Falling Waters, is 
 nearly accomplished. May the book make every one of its 
 readers, truer, higher, and better for having glanced along its 
 pages. The statement has already been made herein, that the 
 author of it never had a friend on earth. That expression 
 needs correction, for from among the thousands who have read 
 his works, the mail brings many a friendly missive from afar ; 
 but the words meant practical, demonstrative, financial friend- 
 ship, such as would aid him in his work for the world. That 
 sort of friendship has never been realized by him. 
 
 Never doubting but that the work would see the light in due 
 season, the author fek encouraged to labor, and wait for the 
 good time, by the s}-mpathies and silent power, if not the 
 actual presence of thousands of the good and true, and noble 
 hearts of earth ; and their good will has been with him since 
 that sad seventh of May, wherein a new purpose was born in 
 his soul, and the first penful of ink began to mark, not the con- 
 secutive story, but the condensed results of a life's observation, 
 and experience in the vast, and not yet half-explored, domain 
 of the human affections. 
 
 Perhaps a better book can be written on the grand subject. 
 No one will hail it, come whence it ma} T , with fuller joy than 
 will he who penned this one. May the world be flooded with 
 
374 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 them. Such a deluge is needed ; and the quicker it comes the 
 sooner it will be cleansed. 
 
 Go, book, and begin thy work in the lands, in the nations, and 
 among the peoples. Thou wast written for those now on earth, 
 and for those who shall be hereafter, when the hand that penned 
 thee is cold in death, and the soul that gave thee birth is fast 
 anchored in the breast of God. Born out of the very deeps of 
 a heart-anguish, at which fools and granite hearts may sillily 
 laugh, because they know not yet, — God grant they never may 
 - that : — 
 
 " 'Tis the darkest hour before the morn! 
 When the pain is sorest the child is born 
 And the day of the Lord at hand ! " 
 
 They may laugh, if they choose, and snap their fingers in idle 
 heedlesness, not knowing that the way of thought is rough and 
 hard ; that we cannot pen immortal lines save when the heart is 
 bowed with some deep grief and sorrow ; for it is then, and then 
 only that : — 
 
 " The rapt imagination soars on high ; 
 And hears the jubilate of the sky ; 
 While myriad harps sound ; Glory to the Lamb ! ' 
 And swell the chorus of the Great I Am ! " 
 
 Casca Llanna has been laughed at for years, laughed at by 
 honest men and women, never once, but by the rogues, the 
 false " philosophers " and lecturing libertines of both genders, 
 often, — chaff, stubble and orts of the world ! 
 
 . . . . It was no part of the writer's design to make 
 this book a mere physiological treatise, or a medical essay, as 
 is almost always the temptation of every writer on the subject 
 of the human passions ; but rather to hold the mirror up to na- 
 ture, and by showing the operation of the good, and the tenden- 
 cies of the evil, to encourage the better, and unmask the bad. 
 Believing that we all have more of heaven in us than its oppo- 
 site, the end of the author's design will be reached if he shall 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 375 
 
 succeed in impressing these truths on mankind : That a man's 
 wife should be his goddess ; his home a heaven ; his daughters 
 ministering angels ; his sons genuine men ! and so they will 
 be when all the current false theories of social order tumble 
 headlong to the ground, killed forever dead ; and when love, 
 asserting itself, shall rise as a sunburst of immortal glory to 
 illumine the world we live in ; and then, but not till that day 
 dawns, not on this globe, but in each of our souls, will a man feel 
 himself to be every inch a king, wholly incapable of a mean and 
 selfish act ; and be capable of looking on a woman with pure 
 eyes only, and clean heart, pulsing divine music in her radiant 
 and glorious presence, and recognize her as an inhabitant of a 
 social paradise whereof himself is an essential part. 
 
 When marriage is as it should be, each will, because they 
 cannot help it, think the other the acme of perfection, of all 
 that was ever seen or dreamed of! — the realization of the dear- 
 est hope ever sighed for by human beings. 
 
 When a woman loves, her perceptions are quicker than the 
 lightning's flash, keener than its edge ; and let her husband 
 know all he may ; let his mind be a magazine of lore, and his 
 memory a cyclopaedia, and her intuitions will outshine them all ; 
 hence love in a household is an investment sure to pay in a hun- 
 dred ways, for a loving woman is the best and safest adviser 
 ever a man had, from the time he leads her to the altar until 
 the moment he is struck with immortality ! 
 
 Onty when a man or woman loves is their moral strength at 
 its maximum or highest tide ; and he or she who really loves, 
 is triply armed against all temptation, especially when of a 
 purely sensuous nature, — which temptations, in these times, 
 are very varied and formidable ; and unless a rampart of true 
 affection shelters a woman, or man, God help the poor besieged ! 
 Yesterday a resolution was taken not to yield to the control of 
 some tempting, besetting sin, again. To-day there was a slight 
 fall — like the servant girl's baby — it was only a little one t 
 To-morrow it will be the same old story — so strong is human 
 weakness. Nothing but the grace of God, spare diet, and cold 
 water is effective in such cases, — the two last are very excel- 
 
376 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 lent, and are more easily reached than the first. True, pra} r er 
 is a very good thing, but then a great deal of watching must 
 needs go along with it. " Lead us not into temptation " is cap- 
 ital, so far as it goes, but " run straight away from tempta- 
 tion," provided you do it, is a great deal better, provided, 
 again, that you keep away ; for just as sure as a tempted man 
 or woman stops to " consider about it," or to " argue the point," 
 your case is done up completely, and you'll just as surely 
 c * fall again " as that ducks will swim if there's a chance. There's 
 a little concupiscent devil running loose about the world, busily 
 intent upon raising pandemonium with everj r body and every- 
 where. * 
 
 It will not be so in the better time, because then each will 
 feel toward the other sentiments of affection and esteem, such 
 as cannot be inspired by any other human being. 
 
 How can it be otherwise when marriage is the joining of 
 hearts and natures, instead of, as too often in these days, 
 bodies and estates ! 
 
 How can a married pair fill the true bill of wifehood and hus- 
 bandage, or anything else, any other great human duty, prop- 
 erly, and as befits immortal beings, while in a whirl of constant 
 bicker, fret, turmoil, and social and domestic hurricanes, tem- 
 pests, and drizzling streets of discontent? How can they real- 
 ize the glorified life of a true believer, or bathe themselves in 
 the full, deep tides of the eternal mercy gushing from the infi- 
 nite, everlasting beneficence ? The gabble of ten billions such 
 is far outweighed by a single sentence like the following, which 
 is taken from a letter written by a correspondent, Hannibal, 
 Oswego Co., N. Y., and received this August 1st, 1871 : — 
 
 " Let me say in conclusion that the characters embodied in 
 your writings portray my highest ideal of manly perfection. 
 Nobility of soul breathes through every line, and true man- 
 hood shines through and permeates every sentence." 
 
 Of course the correspondent's estimate is too high, yet it is 
 deeply gratifying to know that a book of his has awakened 
 such an appreciation, and that the lessons taught, and also 
 
WOMAN* LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 377 
 
 striven to be learned, have not been in vain. Thank Heaven 
 such letters are plentiful ! 
 
 And so, Book of the heart, dearer to the soul that gave thee 
 being, than the apple of an eye ! go thou forth to make mankind 
 better, truer, nobler than thou findest them, by teaching the un- 
 learned lesson of forbearance, self-control, self and God reli- 
 ance, and genuine self-respect ; for whoso respect themselves 
 respect others, and by those others are in turn respected ! 
 which, be it known, is ever the case with true Christians and 
 sensible conservatives, never the case with come-outers, radicals, 
 atheists, freedomites, or any of that ilk or genus — or any 
 species of ists, ites or ologists whatever, who, when measured 
 at their real value, are found to be but the froth of life — the 
 scum of the human sea ! — which is why the writer of this left 
 them long ago, finding, as he did, that their .straight road to heaven 
 and manlihood led directly to the swamps of irreligion, scepti- 
 cism and hell, and afforded not a single passage out, and ended 
 there. In short, this writer never saw an ist, ologist or ite, of any 
 sort or sex, whom he found on trial not to be more firmly wed- 
 ded to destruction than upbuilding, lust than love, and deep 
 damning villany than honest, straight-out manhood and goodness. 
 He makes no exceptions whatever, among all whom he ever 
 saw, spoke to, or knew, from January 1st, 1848, to Dec. 1st, 
 1871. On the other hand he never found as many bad, soiled, 
 dishonest, lust-driven wretches in twenty } r ears among the con- 
 servative and Christian classes, as he found among radicals in 
 any single month during that prolonged period. These things 
 are said as a last and final testimony against radicalism, and in 
 favor of the undefiled religion of Jesus Christ. Let this testi- 
 mony endure while he lives, and be quoted when he shall be 
 dead ! And further, on the love subject, let it be said that he 
 never saw a female radical whom he did not believe to be wholly 
 demoralized to, and beyond the degree of recovery ; nor a male 
 fit to be trusted alone with any decent respectable female. It is 
 not so in the Christian ranks. It is never otherwise in those of 
 radicals ! Were company of the latter class coming to his 
 house, he would never trust wife or daughter out of his sight, 
 
878 WOMAN, EOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 and within the sphere of their influence a single hour ! nor his 
 sons either ! because an experience measured by years has 
 proved radicalism rotten to the core, of the deepest hells hell- 
 ish, utterly and totally demoralizing ; and to tamper with it is 
 to be soiled within and without ; for never yet has he seen a man 
 or woman made better, but thousands made worse by it ; and 
 he never knew a single good thing come of it from first to last ! 
 
 Mrs. Gossip : " Oh, what a villain and rake that Charley is ! 
 Don't you believe last week he had a lady in his room — all 
 alone ! — when suddenly there came a rap at the door, and he 
 hid the good-for-nothing in a closet. "Well, don't you think ! 
 when the visitors came in they suspicioned his rascality, and one 
 of them tried the closet door — I really thought I should ! — but 
 when the door opened, she jumped out'n the window — and I 
 really thought Pel broke my neck!" 
 
 Now whenever you hear a gossip's tongue run to you about 
 some one else's shortcomings, rest assured that said tongue will 
 also serve yon up at the very first chance ! 
 
 Many men fall in war and are lost ; more men fall in love and 
 are ruined. The world is yet barbaric, and it won't do to put 
 too much trust, or confide too freely, in passional humanity ; 
 for when the tide fails, word, honor, promise and faith go out 
 with it ! What's a house without a woman ? — Sure enough ! 
 
 A writer in Theodore Tilton's " Golden Age " broke ground in favor of 
 a larger liberty in heart affairs than conservative morals allow, whereupon 
 another writer breaks ground and Tilton's writer to boot, on the other side, 
 but in the article attacks Tilton instead of his correspondent. The reader 
 will therefore do Mr. Tilton justice and lay the odium where it rightly be- 
 longs. 
 
 " Deak Sin: — You have recently said in ' The Golden Age,' 'I hold 
 that love, and love only, constitutes marriage ; that marriage makes the 
 bond, not the bond the marriage ; and that, as the contract is to love and 
 honor, so that when the love and honor end, the contract dissolves and the 
 marriage ceases.' Doubtless this is practically true. If you fail to do 
 what you promise to do ; if the fulfilment ceases entirely, and the bond is 
 by you utterly broken and thrown away, undoubtedly your crime is the 
 death of the contract. That fact was tolerably familiar as far back as the 
 Stone Age, the savage philosophy of which you will hardly be able to prove 
 a golden fruit of new culture. There probably is not a decent woman on 
 the globe who, properly comprehending your statement, will not confess 
 its ugly truth. A promise to pay dies when the paying finally ceases. A 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 379 
 
 promise to love and honor dies when the loving and honoring finally cease. 
 The bright honor of the promise being gone, its veracity gone, everything 
 that it was entirely gone, of course it is gone, with all which it created. And 
 that is your theory of the treatment of woman, to get rid of the marriage 
 by getting rid of the contract creating it, and to get rid of the contract by 
 the method of dishonor! 
 
 " I take in hand the case which you commonly put, that of the man 
 against the woman. You say, ' I would no more permit the law of the 
 land to enchain ma to a woman whom I did not love than I would permit 
 the same law to handcuff me as a slave.' I omit part of your sentence, 
 which does not affect the case of man simply, in his treatment of woman 
 and wife. In what I quote you declare that you will not permit the law 
 of the land to hold you to your own free promise and sacred contract. 
 Have you no logic? Is this a question of taking you by force and hand- 
 cuffing you to a woman against your will ? If it is not, then there is no 
 argument in your comparison. Is slavery the slave's free and honorable 
 contract? If it is not, then there is not a jot of reason in the assumed 
 analogy. . No, sir; this is a question of your contract with a woman, made 
 upon free and urgent desire, freely and deliberately made, made with the 
 combined seriousness and sacredness of religion and law, religion for the 
 reality of the bond, and law for the cover and form of the bond, the relig- 
 ion not leaning one whit for truth on the law, nor the law intruding one 
 hair's breadth upon the religion, but both agreeing to seal a contract the 
 most firm and sure, as it is the most free and deliberate, known to human 
 economy. 
 
 "The matter of some other relation than a marriage of love and honor 
 would, of course, raise other questions. But these I need not discuss. If 
 one wants a concubine, one or more, the world is wide, and hell thereof 
 sufficiently accessible. But I assume that you mean, not that consciously 
 and deliberately, but good and true marriage. Therefore, I am bound to 
 find in your words the declaration that you will not let the law of the land 
 hold you to your own free and solemn contract. And your reason for re- 
 fuging to have the form of honor maintained by the law is that you do not 
 mean to be held to the fact of honor. It is not that you would have relig- 
 ion alone constrain you to fulfil your contract, but that you want a chance 
 to violate your contract. You say 'love should be like religion, free 
 from mandate by the civil law,' and you prophesy that ' the next genera- 
 tion will gild this sentiment with fine gold.' The sentiment has been done 
 in brass a sufficiently long time to be familiar, and would not be much im- 
 proved if the next generation should make of it a goldenseals I mean the 
 sentiment of love free to violate contracts. You seem to invoke religion ; 
 in fact, you invoke nothing but rascality. For you demand freedom to 
 violate the religion, as well as the law, of marriage, to break your religious 
 promise as well as your legal. You only care to have the law let you 
 alone in order that you may leave the woman to whom religion has bound 
 you. 
 
 " There is but one ground which I need to consider here to make plain 
 the infamous character of the license to violate both religion and law 
 which you demand for yourself; and that is the reason which the woman 
 you wish to put away had to require of you a contract, a deeply religious 
 and firmly legal contract, as the basis of marriage. You desired her to 
 give you, irrevocably, that honor of person and life which is the sacrament 
 of her existence. You wished to take from hor sureties of marriage, 
 which, once given, are forever given. There doubtless are females dis- 
 eased in body and imagination from their birth, to whom honor is not 
 
380 WOMAN, LOVE) AND MARRIAGE, 
 
 honor under any constraints of solemn promise of unchanging fidelity. 
 But the average decent woman, to whom nakedness is not necessary to 
 the perfect luxury of chastity, requires, and must always require, the 
 strongest assurance of that protection for her honor, which only a deep 
 religious promise of unchanging fidelity can give. If you do not mean to 
 offer this in seeking a woman in marriage, then you do not mean love and 
 honor, and propose a marriage which is a swindle and an outrage. Such 
 rascality is but too possible where there is a question of winning a woman, 
 the winning to enjoy is so much more to the average male mind than the 
 winning to love and honor. In a state of double guardianship of woman, 
 by religion and by law, it is still a fearfully common thing for men to simu- 
 late or imagine, under the impulse of desire, love and honor which do not 
 exist. Hence the necessity to woman of law to give form to the fact, or 
 the fancy, of love and honor, which form her sole security in marriage. 
 Law will forbid the man to let his desires wander ; it will at least compel 
 him to maintain a decent form of permanent protection for woman. The 
 double contract, religious for the real fact, and legal for the outward 
 cover and form, is no more than a woman may demand. 
 
 "I have spoken only of the woman's honor. It were enough to speak 
 of that. But beyond that is her chance in life, which, on the average, is 
 terribly injured by the miscarriage of a marriage relation. She can give 
 but once the fairest freshness of her nature. Too often, if set aside, she 
 must remain a rejected thing, perhaps helpless to live, except by methods 
 of direct toil or uttermost shame. It must be more than a slight cause, 
 more than an ordinary reason, which can make her willing to forego the 
 foiin at least of love and honor, which may be decent even if it be empty. 
 " But, still more, there is motherhood, adding in every way to the 
 stringency of the necessities already considered. The mother and children 
 must live, must have care and kindness for years onward into the future ; 
 must depend on the marriage already existing, and on the husband and 
 father whose is the sole responsibility in the matter, and must look for love 
 and honor, in form, at least, and decency, if not in fact and blessed sweet- 
 ness, to the man who stands before God and the law held to render these 
 by the most solemn of contracts. Therefore, woman cannot but ask for, 
 yea, insist on, this double contract. Religion alone would answer this pur- 
 pose if it would enchain wandering desires and handcuff libertine rascality. 
 But this religion alone cannot do, as surely as law with religion can do it. 
 The man who honestly means a religious contract, cannot refuse to woman 
 the added assurance of the legal contract. If any man does not honestly 
 mean what he promises, to enchain and handcuff him is utterly and abso- 
 lutely necessary, if restraint of wrong-doing is anywhere a necessity. No 
 other than a criminal can feel his contract with a woman as chains and 
 slavery. 
 
 " What, then, Mr. Tilton, do you mean by your declaration that you will 
 not let the law of the land hold you to a contract which you wish to vio- 
 late ? If you mean criminal outrage, you will find the law of the land able 
 to hold you, or at least able to brand you as a monster. 
 
 "In the last issue of ' The Golden Age 'you argue the matter again. You 
 say that ' Love is love — not liking, not friendliness, not kindness, not es- 
 teem, but love — and if a man has ceased to feel it for the woman who sits 
 at the other end of his breakfast table, which is the most moral — or least 
 immoral, if you will — for him to break the chains which bind him, break 
 them as gently and unselfishly as he may, but in some wise set himself 
 free, put himself in a position to live a true life ; or to wear his fetters un- 
 
WOMAN-, LOVE, AXD MAItRIAGE. 381 
 
 complainingly, silently, but invoking meanwhile all the lightnings of heaven 
 to do for him what he has not the courage to do for himself 
 
 " If this were meant for the persiflage of a gay rake, justifying variety 
 ' at the head of his breakfast table,' I could understand it. You speak of 
 the man only, as if the woman were not of much account in the matter. 
 You seem to hold her cheaper than men of free lives commonly hold a mis- 
 tress. Her honor, which you cannot give back, her wifehood, which rests 
 on her honor, her motherhood, which must continue none the less for your 
 desertion, and to which you owe eternal fidelity, — these you make of no ac- 
 count; she merely ' sits at the head of your table,' and it is a question of 
 leaving her to sit there alone or of driving her out into the world. And 
 that you call the Age of Gold. It looks to me more like the time when 
 tools were first made of bronze after the coarse patterns of the Age of 
 Stone. There is not so much manliness in your whimpering appeal to the 
 moral law as ruled the breasts of the cave-dwellers, who would have broken 
 your head with a stone hatchet, and served you right, if you had thus pro- 
 posed to quit your marital obligations. You might easily be set down as 
 half fool and half knave in this plea, if it were possible to see that in either 
 character you are at all deficient. You sit there wishing her dead ; you 
 confess that what you thus do ' has the spirit of murder in it.' You quote 
 a church-member who said that it was impossible for human nature not to 
 cherish this murderous wish under such circumstances ; and then you tri- 
 umphantly ask whether it is better to murder the woman or to put her 
 away. Either may be better for the woman, but the question is what you 
 are bound to do, not what is worst of the crimes you say you intend to 
 choose between. 
 
 "You go on with Stone-Age morality of this sort: ' What if the wom- 
 an who pleased your youth has no charm for your manhood? What if you 
 married, as most men do, who marry young, in utter ignorance of yourself 
 and your own needs ? You wake up some day to realize that you are a 
 stranger at your own hearthstone — that there is no one there who com- 
 prehends your purposes or shares your tastes ? 
 
 Just when you have settled yourself to your fate, you meet — does God or 
 Satan throw it in your way ? — the not impossible she who can command 
 your soul. Before you know it you love, simply as the earth grows warm 
 
 when the sun shines on it Something jangles in 
 
 your wife's voice — the voice is well enough, the discord is because you 
 
 hear at the same time another voice in your ears 'If 
 
 I were but free — if I were but free ! ' goes dizzily through and through 
 your brain, like the refrain of a hunting song.' 
 
 "And your conundrum is — Which woman? Well, T. Tilton, I can- 
 didly advise you to get your sweet young soul damned to everlasting per- 
 dition rather than forsake the wife of your youth. You might have chosen 
 better, but you chose, and honor, whiter than heaven, binds you. About 
 the binding of the woman I am not speaking. If she has a father to go 
 to, probably she had better leave a husband who confesses to murder lurk- 
 ing in one eye and lust leering out of the other. You might be tempted to 
 send her on a Sunday excursion to Staten Island ; or you might burden 
 yourself with two domestic establishments, to the great peril of the Age 
 of Gold. Probably the woman had better leave you if she can, but lay 
 not the flattering unction to your soul that you are a man, even of the 
 Stone- Age sort. You are an incipient hellion, if I may be pardoned for a 
 strong but not unsuitable term. You have hell on the brain, you that 
 think that to be kind, and friendly, and full of gracious respect to your 
 wedded wife, is a mean and empty, and comparativoly immoral thing, 
 
382 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 because there is another woman who might be more to you than the wife 
 can be. You talk about ' so to situate yourself that you can live an hon- 
 est and true life ! ' You are already situate with the damned, and this 
 hankering of your soul for some other woman, and wish that the one you 
 have were dead, is a foretaste of deepest hell. 
 
 " Let me show you the path to heaven. Your wife, we will assume, 
 cannot follow your soaring genius. You are poetic, and she prosaic. 
 Apollo would envy your beauty, and she is homely. You ' command ' no 
 end of women, and she cannot command even her husband's honor, not to 
 speak of his love. The world rings with your praises, and she scolds and 
 frets in your kitchen. I imagine I put it very strong, especially this about 
 your praises, but never mind. Now, T. Tilton, get right down from your 
 stilts, clean down upon your knees, and try to imagine at least that not all 
 the great gods nod when you nod. Yon probably can't humble yourself, 
 even before God Almighty, enough to feel that your wife is quite as good 
 as you deserve — not to say a great deal better. But you are perhaps 
 come down enough to nartly understand what a knightly humility is. Then 
 you may remind yourself what your contract of love and honor is, and 
 swear by bright honor's self that you will keep your promise made to the 
 woman who has given you her all. Never mind occasional Christians of 
 the African convert type, who would kill and eat the old wife to be free 
 with a fresh ' not impossible she.' The notion that you cannot be 
 decently and happily true, at least in some large measure of unwearied 
 courtesj r , and kindness, and esteem, and fidelity, is one of the devil's own. 
 Better go to hell with a red-hot stopple in your gullet than put your lips to 
 that cup of perdition, the notion that desire for another woman is your 
 supreme necessity. Desire is doubtless a thorn in the flesh to sweet young 
 things like you, but you can be a man nevertheless, keeping decently and 
 honorably the woman you are enchained to, and manfully denying, destroy- 
 ing even, the desire which is not of honor any more that it is of law. Try 
 that for ten years, T. Tilton, and though many virgins will tempt you, and 
 desire may continue to trouble, there will be neither murder nor lust in 
 your heart, but a manly effort at least for the honor, which will be the very 
 gate of heaven to you, and a world of comfort to the woman who was so 
 unfortunate as to marry a man too young and too weak to put intelligence 
 and conscience into the most solemn contract which any man can make." 
 
 Exit that particular "Free-Love" correspondent, not in a 
 " blaze of glory." 
 
 Up-hill, from the precious arms of the dear mother who bore 
 him, and who went to heaven when he was but five years old, — 
 leaving him alone, friendless, and very sensitive — to the tender 
 mercies of a very cold world, Casca Llanna (the author's 
 real name is that recorded as author of the other A-olumes of 
 this series) has fought his way along and alone to this triumphant 
 victoiy — for it is a victoiy to see this work in print ! Alone ? 
 No ! not alone, for he is never alone who believes in God and 
 loves his mother ! for even the blessed angels from the far-off 
 starry worlds of light quit their bright abodes and cleave their 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AXD MARRIAGE. 383 
 
 swift way through the spacial vastitudes, to protectingly reach 
 his side who trusts in God, and loves his mother ! So have 
 they in the case of hirn whose hand pens these pages. 
 
 One year's schooling only fell to his lot. He taught himself to 
 read — his primers were the posters in the streets, his copy- 
 books the fences, his pen a bit of chalk ! What of it? There's 
 no difficulty to him who truly wills and looketh up to God in 
 perfect faith. Io Triomphe ! 
 
 Married twice. Radicalism debauched both wives, and ren- 
 dered a happy home a wilderness of woe. Then he thought his 
 troubles over when the heart grew well again. But no. God 
 called up an angel from the deep and said : " Go thou to him 
 and mask a terrible hell beneath the smiles of Heaven. Open 
 his soul ; tap thou the deep fountains of his spirit ; let the sharp 
 pangs of daily death be his ; crush his heart, his hopes, his all, 
 let him bleed at every pore — do everything but slay him, and 
 then when he lies at the last gasp, when men forsake and re- 
 vile him, when hope fails, and all to him seems nearly lost, put 
 thou a pen in his hand, and burning, fieiy, heart-words on his 
 lips, and bid him face the world and speak ! look up to Heaven 
 and awa\ r from hell, and write ! " And lo, it was done ; and he 
 took a new name, and he spoke till strength gave out, and 
 then Casca Llanna wrote other books as well as this, the object of 
 all of them being to teach the married that each — as well as 
 the children kind Heaven may have sent them — has inborn 
 rights which both are reciprocally bound to respect. That each 
 are individuals in their own right as well as parties to the social 
 compact, and that each nature wants sympathy in its own 
 special, as well as in the common key ! That each demands, by 
 virtue of their mutual interrelations, trust in its absolute 
 fulness ; affection in all its deep sincerity ; and respect in all its 
 delicacy and profundity ; and teach them that out of such a 
 state of things will come a fusion and blending so perfect as 
 to be incapable of severance, even by the sharp, keen knife of 
 death itself. 
 
 Love, in its purit}', is like a gentle rain, which, falling on the 
 barren moors and fields, and arid plains and yellow wastes, 
 
384 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 presently fills the interstices, causing them to swell with grati- 
 tude, and then, opening earth's pores, woos, and then by and by 
 wins the delicious greenery to uplift in peerless beauty, and 
 ere long ripen into gladsome golden grain ! 
 
 Love is like a little tiny ripple on the mountain's side, gather- 
 ing its fellows as it courses down the yielding soil, increasing 
 its volume as it gayly sails toward the far-off sea, no longer a 
 rippling tendril of flashing water, but a bubbling, gurgling, 
 pebble-washing brook, ambitious of the honors and the powers 
 of riverhood, which anon it achieves, then broadens out into a 
 grand smile ; a silvery, sheeny, beautiful lake ; of which, when 
 it has its fill of joy, it takes its leave, and again flowing on 
 as a mighty river, feels the pulse of power, ,narrows its boun- 
 daries, and moves with stately energy toward the rapids, and 
 gliding still boldly takes the leap over the precipice — Death ! 
 knowing it will be the same water on the other side ; nor is it 
 mistaken ; but, bubbling up its thanks to the Maker, enters 
 the infinite, eternal ocean, all dotted and spangled with islet 
 gems, radiant and glorious with the ineffable sunshine of the 
 Redeeming God, — the transcendent smiles of the Over Soul! 
 
 Go thou, O Book, and teach men this grand story ; and say 
 besides, to wedded pairs, You are, or should be, all in all to 
 each other, for none others can be. No one but yourselves can 
 know yourselves as you knew each other ; nor can any but your 
 two selves share, or even imagine, your real life, or appreciate 
 your actual lot. What others think of, or say about you, does 
 not amount to much at best, so far as your real life is concerned ; 
 but what 3 r ou think about and say of each other amounts to a 
 very great deal. 
 
 It is certain that God will not hold any of us responsible for 
 what the people say concerning us, but only for what we really 
 are ; and even then will take circumstances into account, know- 
 ing that the play of forces upon us very often deflects our path 
 from that which, under better conditions, we most unquestiona- 
 bly would have pursued. 
 
 Unwise wives often do much toward tearing down the temple 
 of marriage and their own happiness, until both crumble away 
 
WOMAN) LOVE) AND MAURI AGE. 385 
 
 and topple over forever and aye ; but wise wives pursue another 
 course, and seek in every way to upbuild and strengthen the 
 immortal structures. The one says, let it fall, and it falls ; the 
 olher says, touch it not dcstroyingly, let it grow firmer and 
 stronger, and it does so, because one realizes nothing of love 
 and its fruition ; the other knows that when love dies out, life 
 is worthless, and true happiness has fled forever and forever- 
 more. 
 
 Married life is the true field for working out human destinies ; 
 and is, of all others, the grand problem which only the twain 
 directly concerned can truly solve. The sum resultant is either 
 happiness or misery, and for } 7 our own sakes, O wedded pairs — 
 and for God's sake — see to it that it is rightly solved, and that 
 the scale of wretchedness kicks the beam ; for none but a true 
 wife or husband can ever fill the infinite void born in every 
 human heart. Not all the free love on the globe could cover the 
 floors an inch deep, and the sides of that void reach unto 
 heaven ! — so vast is the human soul ! — so immense its capacity 
 for love ! 
 
 Outside of marriage a woman may be almost perfect ; so may 
 a man be. But let them wed, and each loses their respective dis- 
 tinctiveness and almost sinks to nothingness, else the}' coalesce 
 and the two great beings develop joys too vast for little souls to 
 comprehend or fathom. This or that ; there's no middle ground. 
 Marriage makes us either better or worse than we were before, 
 — and there's more worse than better in these gala days of 
 radicalism — which, thank God, are already numbered! 
 
 Individuals, solus, count for either less or more than their 
 separate values in the dual account ; because the wedded state 
 is a relation developing results differing entirely from those of 
 either, singly considered. Think of this, O wonjan ! ponder 
 this, O man ! 
 
 A great deal of stress is laid by modern writers on the in- 
 compatibilities of age, just as if years mai'ked the growth of 
 souls ! If minds, hearts, purposes, are right, years make little 
 difference, in spite of seeming disparities, because Love has no 
 ago beyond puberty, and its presence makes eternal spring 1 
 
386 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 SHE WAS ALL THE WORLD TO ME ! 
 
 So innocent and gentle — in the sunny days now fled, — 
 
 So pure and sweet, and tender, when Virtue crowned her head ; 
 
 Her eyes were soft and loving ; like roses was her breath ! 
 
 But they envied me my happiness, and they drew her down to Death. 
 
 They said " The Christian System " was opposed to human truth, — 
 
 That Marriage was a living tomb, engulfing peace and youth; 
 
 And they won her from my side to san upon their stormy sea, — 
 
 She who was my life and light, and all the world to me. 
 
 Poor me ! My heart is very sore, since the sad and gloomy day 
 When the smiling tempters came along, and stole my wife away, 
 With their "Eights" and "Revolutions," and their God-denying 
 
 " Cause," — 
 Their " Freedoms " and " Affinities " and " New Code of Social Laws." 
 They demoralized an angel ; and they led her to the bad ; — 
 She so pure and truthful, richest treasure e'er I had ; 
 And when she fell, deserted her, with scorn and demon glee, — 
 The woman whom /worshipped — who was all the world to me ! 
 
 When Poverty came on apace, his " love " came to an end ; 
 
 He bartered her with shameless face and sold her to his "Friend! " 
 
 Put her beauty in the market, to bring Mm golden store ; 
 
 And she fell a trifle lower, who had fallen low before : 
 
 And her bright and happy heart became to every virtue steeled, 
 
 Until she died, a Suicide, her grave the potter's field : 
 
 lie laid her there ! black despair ! — and smiled with hellish glee, 
 
 That he had gotten rid of her, — who was all the world to me. 
 
 And then I bowed me down and cried, " Have pity, God! " and wept, 
 
 Till fire kindled in my soul, where quietude had slept ; 
 
 And a voice came down from Heaven: "Up! and smite them hip and 
 
 thigh ! 
 Go strike, strike home, and boldly, God bids thee from on high! 
 Their arms are raised 'gainst Virtue, Marriage, Honor, Truth and Right ! 
 Go, strike! for God is with thee, — will sustain thee with His might! " 
 And I girded on my armor, raised the banner fair to see, 
 And I strike in memory of her, who was all the world to me. 
 
 Up from your sleep ! O men ! for the foe is at the gate; 
 Wearing the garb of Love, while his heart is full of Hate! 
 Pois'nous words he flings; bale-fire tips his darts; 
 Venomous songs he sings, as he aims them at the hearts 
 
WOMAN) LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 387 
 
 Of wife and husband, mother, matron, virgin and fair youth, — 
 Lies from the deeps of hell, arrayed in seeming truth ! 
 Up, from your sleep, O men! on mountain, plain and sea, 
 And strike, as I who strike for her who was all the world to me ! 
 
 No libertine can evoke true love, but onh' mad infatuation ! 
 Nor can a woman of loose morals inspire a sensible man with 
 genuine affection, or infatuate any one but a stupid ninny or 
 right-down fool. 
 
 The power of evoking genuine love is one that none but a 
 true man carries with him, and few there be who are capable of 
 resisting the spell — true love is so very scarce nowadays ; 
 true women scarcer j'et, and genuine men, in every sense, 
 scarcest of all ! For modern love is a compound hash of sigh, 
 fie ! hi, hi ! my ! cry , die, well seasoned with lie ! And, by the 
 waj-, there's altogether too much of the latter condiment in 
 use in love-matters. But a worse course never was conceived. 
 We seldom forget the truth ; hence it is policy to tell it if tell- 
 able ; if not, then silence is next best ; for if one lie be told, it 
 requires three more to bolster it up, — a losing game, because 
 one is mighty apt to forget both the original lie and lose the run 
 of its mates. Truth or silence is the right policy. 
 
 Before the social sea shall be rid of the fierce and terribly 
 devastating tempests which now rage over and lash it into vin- 
 dictive and desolating fury, it is essential that all the people be- 
 come consciously aware of the mighty truth set forth in these 
 pages, that everything and everybody emits, and is surrounded 
 by an aural sphere, an aroma peculiar and unique, an aromal, 
 magnetic, electric, and ethereal envelope, which envelope is for- 
 ever charged and freighted with whatever of good or evil, 
 pleasant or pernicious, is contained — even in minute, as well 
 as voluminous degree — within the bod}-, spirit, or inmost soul 
 of the object, thing or individual emitting it. Hence acute 
 sensitiveness, although fraught with certain drawbacks, is, after 
 all, a decided blessing and advantage, for it enables one to 
 sense and in a greater measure know the real nature and char- 
 acter pf whatever the sensitive person comes in contact with, no 
 matter how good an actor the person may be ; nor how cleverly 
 
388 woman; love, and marriage. 
 
 and well they put on and wear a mask of amiability, virtue, 
 goodness or nobilitj' ; for if there be a rotten spot anywhere 
 about their outer, inner or inmost self, that spot contributes its 
 effluvium to the general surrounding personal sphere, and is a 
 great deal easier detected than would be the same amount of 
 positive goodness, on the principle that one could easily sense 
 the odor of a decayed mouse right in the midst of the finest 
 garden of roses that ever bloomed in Gulistan ! No human 
 being exists but who to some extent is able to sense these 
 spheres, and to draw conclusions more or less correct concern- 
 ing the characters of those from whom they are evolved. 
 
 These auras have seven distinct and strongly marked, nay, 
 unmistakable effects, more or less intense, according to the de- 
 gree of sensitiveness attained, or the nicety and perfection of its 
 culture. 
 
 These seven — to a greater or less degree — Stupefy, Elec- 
 trif}'-, Magnetize, Clarify, Satisfy, Poison, or Fascinate ! 
 Study it ! 
 
 Practice makes Perfect ! 
 
 At this point it is well to teach wives the lesson of forbear- 
 ance ; and ask them not to sully the glass of their own lives, 
 by forgetting that husbands are not always in perfect mood ; 
 but that the daily strife in the wide world sometimes so sours 
 the poor fellows as to make them forget themselves and exhibit 
 unamiable traits of dogativeness and mule-itude, both of which 
 are but temporary clouds in the social sky, and are easily wafted 
 away by the summery breath of love and sympathy ! 
 
 Turn the leaf. Husbands should never forget that when God 
 made woman she was as near perfect as circumstances per- 
 mitted, yet nevertheless was far from being finished, as God 
 left that for her husband to do ; wherefore it behoves him to 
 remember every instant of his life that the wonderful creature 
 standing by his side is wholly unfathomable ; that it is part 
 of every woman's nature to — at times — be outrageously 
 cranky, contradictory, petulant, impatient, . offish, queer, 
 strange, enigmatical ; and that every woman under the face of 
 the broad heavens exhibits more or less of these seemingly dis- 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 389 
 
 agreeable traits, not of choice, but by force, strong, irresistible, 
 
 — of her nature, structure and functions in the grand economy ; 
 that they are more frequent and pronounced prior to her 
 grand climacteric — before she has passed the tremendous 
 ovarian rubicon than afterward, albeit she does not even then 
 leave them all behind. 
 
 Men who have wives should not fail clearly to understand 
 that just so long as they are capable of adding to the world's 
 population, just so long are they liable to the most surprising 
 and really unaccountable freaks of temper, action, thought and 
 resolution ; and the most delightful wife on the planet is not to 
 be less loved, fondled and respected because once in a while she 
 takes supreme, ineffable and exquisite delight in being con- 
 trary, whimsical, capricious ; — revelling in all sorts of oddities, 
 queerities, and the most strange conceits and moods. Most 
 men are aware of the facts, but are stone-blind, unjustifiably 
 blind, to the mighty underlying causes ; that all her strange 
 variations from the masculine ideal of the proper thing results 
 from her almost direct and personal associations with the vast 
 creative and formative energies of the broad universe ; that the 
 human being is a compound of all known, and billions of un- 
 known things, essences, principles ; and that woman is the being 
 who collects them together and fashions them into living, 
 moving, breathing active human beings, and crystallizes them 
 into distinct types of imperishable, never-dying conscious enti- 
 ties ! She is the incarnator, while God is the Creator, of human 
 souls. Think of this, O husband and lover, think of this ! and 
 that, when the mighty, yet laughed-at spell — just think of it! 
 
 — is drawing near, or rests upon her soul, she is weak and 
 pitiable, and appeals with a myriad trumpet tongues, sounded by 
 the arch-seraphim, throughout all Nature, and echoed back from 
 Everywhere ! for patience, tender treatment, mercy and love — 
 love right out of the furnaces of every true man's soul who 
 treads the soil of God's green earth, or drinks in life from the 
 boundless iEth in which the worlds are floating ! 
 
 When God charges her soul, — either with the preparatory 
 message — which he does thirteen times a year ! — or when she 
 
390 WOMAX, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 is diligently performing it, soul is at work, sir, soul is working 
 out its primal mission ; and heart is called for from you to her, 
 and goodness broad as ocean, high as heaven, and deep as death, 
 is the debt you owe her, and must pay, and if you do not, you 
 are less than half a man ! She is the direct agent and minister 
 of God, then, if at no other time, and she is performing a labor 
 transcendently grand, superlatively holy, and so divine that the 
 arch-seraphim look on with wondering awe at this conscious- 
 ization of a death-proof soul ! She is godly then, or never, 
 and requires godly treatment at the hands of all who breathe. 
 "With what vehement energy would every true man kick the 
 scoundrel who would then underrate or abuse a woman, — who 
 then needs and should have all the dear tenderness that swelled 
 the soul of the compassionate Christ, for in her mighty work 
 she needs and she deserves it all ! — and all the time, because 
 her work is an infinite one, and what she is building will last to 
 all eternity ! — and when duration ceases, only then will she be 
 able to write " Finis " to her work ; for to her inner, upper, better, 
 loftier, holier mission, there is no yesterday or to-morrow, but 
 only the present To-da}^, whose sun shall know no setting ! 
 Wherefore, O husband, be such, in very truth and deed ; and 
 give to her now what her soul yearns for — love and tenderness — 
 that her work may be well done, and not botched as is the cus- 
 tom of marriage-land in the present era ! See to it that you 
 repress the inopportune tides of anger, passion and neglect ; but 
 instead bravely sacrifice 3-ourself and strive to kindle up aer 
 soul's best warmth and light, and by and by j'ou will see such 
 fruitage ! drink in sitch joy ! reap such kisses from such lips ! 
 and the child ! ah, the child ! — the perfection of physical beauty 
 and constitution, and the destined wielder of such mental power 
 as shall make the world stand still and wonder ! Great 
 Heaven ! "What rewards will not come to him who does his 
 duty, and so well deserves them ! 
 
 Elsewhere in this series of books it has been said that the 
 majority of wedded couples live wholly on the surface, and 
 entirely outside of each other's affections, so far as recti 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 391 
 
 heart, and will, and deeper soul are concerned ; which, of 
 course, is wrong, and wholly foreign to the true purpose and 
 intent of the mystic union. It has also been said that each 
 human being, no matter whether barbaric — as most of us are ! 
 — or civilized — as but few of us can really claim, in all 
 respects, to be ! — is a vast, intricate, involute, yet simply, 
 but absolutely perfect telegraphic system, in each self con- 
 sidered, and also with reference to the immediate associates, 
 and, in the final analysis, every one else, dead or alive, high or 
 low, in the habitable sections of the entire universe. There 
 are principal offices at every essential point in the human 
 economy, — as finger-tips, lips, eyes, — everywhere that nerves 
 meet, and muscles, veins, and arteries deflect and part com- 
 pany ! In fact there are termini and distributive offices located 
 where we least suspect ; and so perfectly arranged and ordered, 
 that whatever transpires in any department of the vast domain 
 of Body, Mind, Spirit or Soul, news of the fact and event is 
 forthwith transmitted to every other section and point of the 
 vast machine. 
 
 Proof is seen that the news that a mother saw a toad, or that 
 a father had six toes or fingers, has been telegraphed to and 
 recorded on the bodies of unborn babies ; and all the vices and 
 some of the virtues of both parents have been and always will 
 be recorded in the same way, by the same instrumentality, on 
 the same plastic substance of people who are not yet, but are 
 yet to be ! 
 
 Now the true divine intent of marriage was, is, and ever will 
 be, that every wire of one system should connect with every 
 wire of the other. But alas, alack ! and well-a-day ! how very 
 far short of so complete a union we all fall in these dismal 
 ages ! 
 
 Our nerves are the wires ; our brains are the chief offices ; our 
 lungs, stomachs, and other viscera are the batteries ; our un- 
 seen souls are the overseeing presidents ; all humanity are the 
 stockholders and the company, whose interests are vested in 
 the joint concern. The nerve-bundles, or ganglia, are the 
 relays, retorts and magazines, where are stored up, ready for 
 
392 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 use, the refined and subtle auras, magnetisms, and electric 
 fluids, whose functions are not merely the distribution of news, 
 but of energies, powers, forces, throughout the almost infinite 
 continent of the woman and the man ! The chief operator — 
 of whose action we are never apprised, save when its results 
 are tangible — the mysterious and unknown soul ! — sits quietly 
 on its throne in the brain, and sees that each operator flashes 
 all news, good or bad, of whatever is going on at head-quarters, 
 or the chief cities of the great republic; Brain cit} r , Passion- 
 town, Angerville, Justopolis, Holyburg, Religionton, Mor- 
 alania, and all the rest. But that is not all ; for he oversees 
 the distribution of energies, potencies, and powers likewise, 
 and sees that the demands of Thinkington, Sexburg, or Villain- 
 ville, receive their due supplies — albeit the two last, in his 
 judgment, and the writer's, get a great deal more than their 
 fair and honest share ; while Manburg and "Womanville, with 
 their outlying villages, are robbed by the odious monopolists 
 mentioned, and their fair share of supplies cut off, that the 
 States of Badness and Scoundrelton may thrive apace. Yet 
 nevertheless, this untiring superintendent impartially fills his 
 office, and orders both messages and supplies to be sent to all 
 parts of the grand economy ; to the valleys and the lakes, the 
 jungles and the brakes ; the fields, fens, and moors, cities, 
 towns, and hamlets ; through the vast oceans ; over the 
 prairies and across the continents, not only of the human body, 
 but its inlining spirit, immortal realm, soul ! No matter what 
 or where sent it must be, and sent it is — good or evil, right or 
 wrong ; and the facts are recorded whatever they be, in a kind 
 of writing that will not fade out or be washed away, upon 
 tablets solid as the eternal hills, and enduring as time itself! 
 
 A man comes home from his daily fight with the world, — 
 employers, bankers, lawyers, liars, newspaper editors, report- 
 ers, book-sellers, author-starvers, etc., etc., — and he hunts 
 up his wife, finding her in the back kitchen scolding like mad 
 over her troubles — and he kisses her as a husband ought, but 
 a great many don't, after the sometimes eternal going down 
 of the honeymoon ! Well, if he is a politic man, perhaps that 
 
woman; love, axd marriage. 393 
 
 kiss is not spontaneous, but like as not is made to order, and he 
 fancies it takes her in completely ! Poor fool ! he never made 
 a greater blunder in his life, for you might as well expect to get 
 back lent money, or preserve the esteem and friendship of those 
 who got it of you, — an utter impossibility, — as to fool a 
 woman with a counterfeit kiss ! for just as sure as he tries it on, 
 just so sure is she absolutely certain to instantly find it out. 
 Because a kiss is a vehicle of soul, and if the soul isn't there to 
 supply the yearning it was intended to, it is just like kicking 
 with all j'our might at empt}' air, striking at nothing, or getting 
 a good drink out of pictured champagne, — things that can't be 
 did ! If the kiss be a cool, matter-of-fact affair, there's no juice 
 in it, ne'er a " balmy breath " on her part, but ten to one there is 
 on his — cheap balm at that ! fifteen cents a glass, and warranted 
 to mix up a man's understanding in twenty minutes so effect- 
 ually that the skein-untangling sisters would give it up as a bad 
 job in very short order ! 
 
 Now some kisses are sonorous,— the kind alluded to are par- 
 ticularly so, — but scarcely does the sound of such a one break 
 upon the still air, than the telegraph from his lips records the 
 word " humbug" on the tablets of her soul ! She is instantly and 
 perfectly aware of the fact, even if, as is likely, she keeps mum 
 about it and says nothing ; while just as like as not, again, she 
 smiles a smile within herself, as she realizes her abundant abil- 
 ity, and willingness, and knowledge of where to obtain the genu- 
 ine article ; or if not so far gone as that, then such a kiss sug- 
 gests the necessity of so doing at the very first convenient 
 opportunity ; and if there is one thing above another tbat a dis- 
 contented woman knows how to make, it is an opportunity ! 
 
 Your short, sharp, crisp, mercantile, off-handish lip-saluta- 
 tion is another desecration of the contract, — a complete abomi- 
 nation in any household on the earth — except when given to visit- 
 ing country cousins, whom you want to freeze, but are obliged 
 to treat civilly, welcome to your board, and be bored by in spite 
 of yourself, and because such people never take a hint, or a new 
 departure, and who, as a very general thing, are oblivious of 
 the fact that their room is far preferable to their company. 
 
394 WOMAN, LOVE) AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 "Writing on this veiy point in a prior volume, entitled " The 
 Disembodiment of Man," the author hereof had occasion to say, 
 and here repeats, quoting from himself, that : " When warm 
 lips meet warm lips, rendered odorous by balmy breaths, charged 
 with deep desire, then there is let forth a whole battery of light- 
 ning, that wakes up the slumbering soul, closes all other doors, 
 and brings the king down from his couch, not only to see what's 
 going on, but to mingle in the scene. Messages are despatched 
 to all nooks and corners of the physical continent, and all the 
 bodily powers are invoked to the congress of sex. Then the 
 spiritual and chest organs of either and both tingle again, and 
 all things but love are unheeded and forgotten ; for even death, 
 disgrace, or danger are laughed at in utter and contemptuous 
 scorn. But when two fond hearts and loving meet upon the 
 lips ; when that love is pure, deep, sincere, and right straight 
 from the soul ; when it is natural, full to the brim, based on 
 mutual fitness, then, oh, then! the soul, spirit, body, — all de- 
 sire, — ai^e instantaneously kindled up into a blaze, not consum- 
 ing, but creating — with, to, and in a fervid, fiery, non-exhaust- 
 ing glow, thrilling, filling, plunging into a bath of exquisite de- 
 light, — a delicious, delirious, soft, yet almost killing rapture ; 
 a lavement in a sea of glory, of supreme bliss ; so universal, so 
 deep, so acute, so intense, full, sweet, biting, as to be inexpres- 
 sible by tongue or pen ; compared to which all other joj^s are 
 tasteless, dull, and insipid, yet wholly unknown and unattaina- 
 ble to all who do not fully, purely, centrally and wholly, yet 
 holily love each other. Mere fitful, physical, blood, electrical, 
 and magnetic lovers realize nothing of all this, because they 
 love not fully, truly ! In many cases their wilful waste makes 
 woeful want. They must die and live again before they get the 
 first taste, or understand love's primary lessons ; but up there, 
 and there only, can its deep mysteries be fully known, its keener 
 j'03's be felt ! 
 
 Human love is made sport of in these dismal ages. It is 
 mainly regarded as animal ; but that is only one of its phases. 
 The thing itself is really divine ; it can only thrive in purity, 
 and that of course is holy. To sum up then, — the meaning 
 
 
TrOJ/^V, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 395 
 
 of hand-shaking, the kiss, and other unions, is the realization of 
 contact. Bearing this in mind let us now proceed. 
 
 True marital or conjugal love strengthens ; but mere pas- 
 sional or seortatory love is false, consuming, dangerous, waste- 
 ful ; for it never is appeased, is always longing, easily dies ; 
 and it entirely, usually, both maddens and destroys. 
 
 True love is pure and sweet desire, 
 But passion — lust — consuming fire ! 
 
 In a love like this last, — either in or out of wedlock, — not 
 marriage, for marriage is never desecrated, — all the fire is on 
 the surface, in the blood ; and when it goes out just so much 
 life goes with it ; souls repel, while bodies endure each other ; 
 beautiful women drop by thousands into premature graves, 
 while men spit themselves away in tobacco, fume away in 
 smoke, or drown themselves in fiery baths of disguised alcohol. 
 Real love is a divine and sacred thing ; sex, and sex alone, is 
 the field and means of its divinest operations. I do not merely 
 a»d only state the ph}'siological fact, but the mental, spiritual, 
 and physical ones as well ; for the mere physics of it is its 
 least part and charm ; which latter reside, and are sought for, 
 in the spiritual and metaphysical demesne of the great human 
 estate. All are not women who wear the human shape, nor 
 men that look like the homos. The one's masculinity has to be 
 softened down, the other's femininity toned up to proper points, — 
 not here, but in the great hereafter. Let this revelation never 
 be forgotten. 
 
 To a greater or less degree, spirits touch when hands are 
 shaken ; but in most cases touch merely. In the ordinary kiss 
 of friendship, a little more of the two surfaces come in contact ; 
 in common marriage, if positive spiritual repulsion on her part 
 does not exist, spirits come, at times, a little closer ; but souls 
 themselves not only touch, but actually fuse and interblend, in 
 the high, hoi} - , and mystical conjugations of real marriage ; 
 because love lies at the basis of our human nature, procreation 
 of the species being its lowest office, procreation of ineffable 
 
306 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 forms of beauty and divine sensation one of the highest. All 
 animals, and man too, outgrow parental affection in time ; the 
 instinct ceases with the self-helping stage of growth in the 
 young. In man it merges into all-embracing fraternal love. 
 
 So much for the quotation from that book. And yet the half 
 of the rapturous story has not been, is not, and never will be, 
 wholly, fully told ; because some things are inexpressible, un- 
 utterable, and the fulness of love is one of them ! It is the 
 dream which even the arch-seraphim of the upper skies hope to 
 realize, at some far-off period of their grand career. 
 Writer of this : What do you think?" 
 I think there's any amount of goodness : . 
 I think there's any amount of sweetness : 
 In any wife : 
 In any husband : 
 If you only know enough to bring it out ! 
 
 If he or she is false, it is better for either not to know it ; 
 and it won't pay to try to fiud out. If it is false, you are 
 wretched and peace and trust are gone. If it is true, 3*011 lose 
 the benefit of the doubt, and are still more wretched ; on the 
 whole, it is Better not to Know ! 
 
 " He comes too near who comes to be denied ; " and yet few 
 men dare to approach an}* woman, unless she herself hangs out 
 the sign saying, " There's not much trouble here ! not much 
 trouble here ! " 
 
 She goes too far, who goes to tempt a man. And if trouble 
 comes, herself is most blamable ! 
 
 A woman's nature cringes, sours, blisters : 
 
 A man's nature withers, decaj-s, fanaticizes : 
 
 If she : 
 
 If he: 
 
 Isn't mated by the other ; for 
 
 He: 
 
 She: 
 
 Needs the presence of the other sex, as birds need air to sing 
 in. 
 
 When a loving couple meet reverses they are far better able 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 397 
 
 to bear them bravely, and share to the heart's core, each other's 
 pain and cai'e, and deep affliction in whatever guise it comes, 
 than are a pair who either hate or merely endure each other, for 
 want of more congenial employment. In the days of poverty 
 and misfortune the value of real friendship is seen, and so is the 
 institution of marriage ; for wifehood and husbandage at such a 
 time rises out of the dust and mire of unholy uses and mean- 
 ings, and asserts inself as a God-founded Institution, — the 
 thrice holy and blessed thing against which fools and brainless 
 radicals raise their impious heads, and which they assail with 
 cracked voices, from cracked lungs, inspired by cracked brains, 
 addled by quack doctrines. Doubtless there are those who read 
 these lines who will suppose the shafts herein hurled are aimed 
 at a special religious sect, as for instance the Spiritualists or 
 Davisites. Well, they are both right and wrong. Whatever 
 Davisite or Spiritualist, or member of any other sect or creed, 
 lay their hands against Social Order, seek to abrogate and 
 abolish marriage, give a free scope to unjust divorce laws, re- 
 solve God into a gas, and human honor into impulse, and teach 
 mankind to ignore everything but appetite, then those are the 
 very persons struck at in these pages, and they who think such 
 are meant are capital guessers at truth. But when it may be 
 said that the blows are aimed at people who believe or disbelieve 
 in certain doctrines of immortality, because they so believe or 
 disbelieve, then such persons thus averring labor under a great 
 mistake, for no such intent animated the writer from first to 
 last. But the blows are intended to fall on whoever is an un- 
 reasoning zealot for new and pernicious social doctrines. Your 
 out-and-out radical who says of marriage, and saj's truly of iso- 
 lated cases — by which no system or principle can be fairly 
 judged — that marriage is useless, bad ; and avers that judging 
 the institutions by the abuses to which it is subjected, that peo- 
 ple are unhappy in it, that happiness was ordained for human 
 kind, and that whatever obstructs or prevents it ought to be 
 abolished; the sophism is a clever and a very dangerous one 
 to weak minds ; but is too contemptible to merit serious 
 refutal. In the first place, the fault is in the people, not the 
 
398 WOWANy LOVB % AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 institution. In the second,' it is the only safeguard society ever 
 had or can have. Third, it is the only firm basis of civilization, 
 sound morals, religion. Fourth, it is the only incentive to 
 intense, deep, and continued human effort to achieve. Fifth, it 
 promotes and fosters science, art, literature. Sixth, it enlarges 
 the scope of the human faculties, and affords a boundless field 
 for their development and display ; and seventh, it alone satisfies 
 the longings of the human heart, and inspires charity, goodness, 
 and all the human virtues. 
 
 Radicalism denies all this, and tells a man that he has a 
 heaven-born right to betray his friend, abuse hospitality, sow dis- 
 cord in families, affinitize his friend's wife and daughters, or any 
 one's wife and daughters to harlotrj" and ruin — a divine right 
 they call this ! It tells a wandering courtesan that between her 
 Sunday lectures — whefein she preaches celestial purity — she 
 may ogle the man at whose house she is stopping, and lure the 
 poor fool from allegiance to his wife, and corrupt his soul, 
 despoil his morals, poison his blood, engender hatred toward 
 his family, unsettle nis mind, destroy the peace of her entertain- 
 ers forever and ever, and all by the grace of God — and her 
 own infernal blandishments ! All these things are done. Time 
 was when the writer was whirled for a space along the dread- 
 ful current, believed it flowed to Heaven, but found it skirted 
 the fiery shores of Hell ! and this is why he in this book tells 
 the story of his life's grief, and cries aloud to all, Hold ! Ruin 
 and Radicalism are convertible terms ! " Let the galled jades 
 wince" again! They tear clown, but what do they build up? 
 What give us instead of our heritage? Listen! For virtuous 
 and modest women, they give us cheek and brazen boldness ; 
 for Christian morality, they give us pigistical obscenity ; for 
 the Bible, they give us — nothing! for God, they give us elec- 
 tricity ; for conscience, they give us leather ; for men, they give 
 us libertines ; for women, brawling viragos ; for virtue, harlot- 
 age ; for marriage, concubinage; for religion, sacrilege; for 
 goodness, blank atheism ; and for the home ! sweet home ! even 
 with all its drawbacks, they offer us communal dwellings, where 
 no woman can know the father of her own child, or a man may be 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 399 
 
 sure of his sou. Darwin tells us our foreparents were ring- 
 tailed monkeys, or something akin thereto. It certainly seems 
 true of the Radical horde, for the ears are extensive and visible 
 though the os cocyx may be safely coiled away. Radicals 
 never bathe in public. 
 
 Love can never thrive outside of marriage. When a man 
 and his mistress run foul of a rock and are stranded, there's no 
 tie to hold them together. They part company, courage, and 
 confidence just as soon as the tempest begins to blow in right- 
 down earnest, — he to try his luck elsewhere ; she to fiud another 
 cully — or the bottom of some river. But a loving married 
 pair, under like circumstance, keep all the above three C's ; 
 promptly recover their equipoise ; look matters squarely in the 
 face ; see what's before them; buckle to the task, and grow 
 strong and prosperous again ; because, refined by misfortune, 
 not hardened by despair, as were the case, did nothing stronger 
 than mere duty and dependence underlie their effort. Such a 
 pair are seldom resigned to fate ; but, rolling up the sleeves of 
 pluck and purpose, forthwith go in, not to lose, but win life's 
 battle. 
 
 When friendships, so-called, drop off one by one, as they are 
 sure to when lowering, leaden-hued clouds hang depressingly 
 low in their life's sky, the loving couple cling closer to each 
 other. Their little boy willingly goes without his winter sled- 
 or summer bat and ball ; the little girl dispenses with a waxen 
 doll, and rigs up, to her notion, a far nicer one with sundiy 
 odds and ends from the rag-bag, which, when she pla}-s house, 
 and invites her brother to tea, said brother pats lovingly on its 
 ragged head, and pronounces it not only a belle of a doll, but 
 " a bully old gal ! " in the bargain, as the twain sip nectar, 
 made of water and tafiy, from broken cups, and enjoy a ban- 
 quet fit for immortal gods ! 
 
 The wife, bless her sweet, loving heart ! rather relishes the 
 joke of being " poor as Job's turkey," or that boily gentle- 
 man's " off ox," and actually laughs all over her glorious face 
 at " the perfectly ridiculous absurdity of a new dress, when the 
 old one can be ripped apart, furbished up, turned, and be a 
 
400 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MAItRIAGE. 
 
 great deal better than new ! As for the husband, he starts out 
 to his work in early morn, with glowing face, bright eye and 
 long strides — plump and square past all ale-hells and lager- 
 dens along his route, whistling sotto voce, as he goes, a stave 
 from an old opera, to the effect that " 'Tis better to laugh than 
 be cry-ing ! mentally garnished with sundry " You bets ! " At 
 night, when he's paid off, and by his comrades invited to " stand 
 treat," he thinks of home, and — " Can't see it ! " with another 
 " You bet!" and then he falls into a reverie somewhat after this 
 style: Only just think! — of the difference between about 
 fourteen tons of right up and down home love running around 
 loose, up at the house — all a-waiting for this individual to swim 
 in, about forty minutes from now; regular sweet waters of 
 delight ; just the thing for a tired man — glory halle-lu-jah-ram ! 
 and I'm the individual — Oh, how is that for high I — and swilling 
 down three pints of bitter beer ! Bitter Beer ! " and before the 
 reverie is over, two young ones are tugging away at his coat, 
 and a delicious pair of lips are sending several telegrams to his 
 soul, right straight from Heart-town ! Glory to God ! Peace 
 and good-will to the wedded ! and confusion to Radicalism 
 everywhere ! Vivat ! and Amen ! 
 
 Misfortunes, when they come to hearts that really love, 
 strengthen bone, muscle, nerve, courage, body, soul, resolution 
 and endurance ; and instead of depressing, fill the heart with 
 new determination, fortitude, and manfulness to breast the 
 storm, and meet the hydra Want, and conquer him half-way. 
 True love's baptism may be of fire, but then what do we amount 
 to till we have been ordealed almost to the bitter death ? How 
 can we develop into true human grandeur, save through antag- 
 onism? How can we realize our great virtues till carping 
 hypocrites have laid bare to the world's eyes and our own our 
 small vices and besetting sius? The sense of greatness makes 
 us great, the flush of goodness makes us good ; but how can 
 we find that out till we have been tabooed, neglected, carped at, 
 frowned down, laughed over, spit at, lied about by empty- 
 headed ninnies, and jealous, envious, fractional women and 
 fragmentary men? Or how can we measure the amount of real 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 401 
 
 gold God has planted deep within us, until want, scandal, sor- 
 row, bitter words, and sharp neglect has set us mining, often- 
 times very deeply, and through a great strata of hard-pan, to 
 find the glittering, shining ore? How can we reach the golden 
 mean of truth unless we have courage to breast the double 
 storm of vindictive, unreasonable conservatism behind us, and 
 the sharp assault of bombattieal radicalism, not only in front, 
 but all around us? How can we be true men and women, 
 unless we go to God for courage to fling down and trample on 
 the lie we accepted as Divine truth awhile back ; confess to our 
 own soul, and God, its only Master, that we were misinformed, 
 misled and mistaken ; and that we dare to right-about-face, and 
 strangle the dressed-up lie we once blindly helped nurse as 
 God's own truth ; nor found out our mistake till the accursed 
 thing, full of life from our own warm hands, reared its dam- 
 nable head, and, hissing its infernal venom right into our very 
 eyes, leaps to our throats, or to strike us to the heart? Strike 
 deeply, too, — strike at wife, husband, child, home, faith, relig- 
 ion, peace, name, fame, hope ! Strike at everything good, pure 
 and holy, in its devilish malignity, — this radical snake of the 
 pit, that dares to call itself the S3 r mbol of love and wisdom and 
 Heaven, while armed and fanged with the deep malevolence of 
 hell ! 
 
 The man or woman beneath whose surface the real shining 
 metal lies, must run the gauntlet or never really be. If the 
 true stuff is in them, they need have no fear of the ultimate re- 
 sult and victory, so long as God lives and reigns Lord Supreme. 
 But the courage is very papery which has not God for its founda- 
 tion. Then it is more solid than a rock, and the ordeals they 
 pass through but ennerve true men and women ; while trials 
 to the unloved and unloving lift the veil from coward hearts, 
 and they quail, and they tremble, and they quake with ungodly 
 fear and are miserable ! 
 
 " Up and at it again ! " is the blazon on the banners of the 
 brave and of the true, whenever and wherever love is the inspire 
 tion. But "rope, razor, revolver, poison, or the water," is the 
 very first suggestion brought by misfortune to the craven souls 
 
402 WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 of such as have no love given or received; no faith in God or 
 goodness, no spontaneity of soul — no soul at all! and there- 
 fore no mental stamina, or moral backbone ! 
 
 Gloom and doubt, despair and fear, seldom long hold sway 
 over such as have faith, or where true love has a firm foothold. 
 Where such is the case, merry, joyous, jocund laughter far more 
 frequently gushes forth in sweet, delicious ripples from musical 
 throat of blooming wife, echoed back in heartsome gurgles from 
 deep bass chest of contented rent-payer ; while her eyes twinkle 
 again, and flash out whole streams of irrepressible fun, away up 
 from her sugar-freighted heart. Watch her now, as she stands 
 there by the stove ! Did you ever ! Just see how red she is in 
 the face as she nearly bursts with laughing, giggling, wriggling 
 ha ! ha ! ha's ! at the absurd idea of " nothing but griddle-cakes 
 and molasses for dinner " ! And, " By jove ! it is funny," roars 
 the husband, as he catches the mighty nice infection ; which, 
 spreading, lays its mouth-opening spell upon the little ones, who 
 join the cachinatory chorus with a " hi ! hi ! hi ! " the " tick- 
 ledest" jovial set of juveniles you ever laid eyes on, as the 
 brilliant fact of such a dinner flashes funnily athwart their 
 blessed little understandings. And yet such a love-seasoned 
 meal is a far richer feast than Roman Lucullus — whom no one 
 loved, who loved no one — ever sat down to, and is onfy 
 equalled in modern days by " the happiest man alive," — the 
 jolly minstrel, whom report says — bless his funny heart ! — sits 
 down to a better table than any man of modern days, for his 
 food equals the Roman's, who had no love at all, while as for 
 love — he has a good deal more than his fair share ! 
 
 True connubial love is a series of ever-rising crescendos of 
 immortal music, struck from the harp of the human soul by the 
 fingers of the peerless Lord of the Seraphim ; it awakens sub- 
 limest melody, cathedral-like and grand, in every vault and 
 chamber of the immortal edifice of the human soul : and when 
 it sounds out full and clear, all unholy thoughts arid things may 
 have been, but are not, and it gives us here on earth a foretaste 
 of that intenser, broader, deeper, and more mystical rapture, 
 
WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. 403 
 
 which true seers tell, and we believe, awaits all who love much 
 when translated beyond the darksome stream called Death ; a 
 subliraer rapture for which suffering on earth fits and attunes 
 eternal souls ! 
 
 And the melody outringing from my soul 
 
 Sweeps away my utter pain as it falls like summer rain, 
 
 And I cry, Oh, God is great, thus to bless my low estate, 
 
 And give to me a blessing denied to rich and great ! 
 
 And my glamour fades away, as I bend my knee to pray, 
 
 And I feel the warming vigor of His smile's benignant ray ; 
 
 And in my darkest hour, when the clouds descend and lower, 
 
 I realize that love is the sole redeeming power; 
 
 And I laugh at earthly hate, knowing Good is only great, 
 
 And at end of this dark fate we shall know a better state. 
 
 For the melody outringing is the song the blest are singing, 
 
 And the gospel of pure love are the blessed seraphs bringing 
 
 Adown the dark abysm, their loving way are winging. 
 
 Hear the melodies unfold, and the euphonies outroll 
 
 The music of redemption unto every weary soul ! 
 
 Oh, it soothes my soul's deep pain : grief will never come again, 
 
 For love's blessings fall upon us like a gentle summer rain. 
 
 Reader, the hand that writes these lines is wholly unsustained, 
 save by Him who forever reigns Imperial Lord of Glory, and 
 though weak in itself, feels strong in Him. Girt with the lines 
 of God, who shall prevail against him or her who strikes for 
 the right ? None ! Therefore, let us all be and do right in all 
 things, for the true man and woman are the world's helpers ! 
 
 The choice, grand souls of every land; 
 God's might and power within their hand, — 
 Crowned with His majesty they stand. 
 
 The twain who truly love, live in two worlds at once, — this, 
 and the celestial one beyond ! conscious entities of two modes, 
 planes, places and phases of existence. Day after day, they 
 grow new attractions toward each other, and to the high, holy, 
 pure, good and true, not in sanctimone, but in lofty realization, 
 far above the dross of dull passion, and the dross of fallible* 
 
404 vroiux, love, and marriage. 
 
 earth, habit, manner, mode, and custom. They breathe the 
 aromas of Heaven, and never sense the sulphurous odors of the 
 pit. While they live, they live for each other, and when they 
 die are parted but for a season, sure to meet again, — 
 
 " Where the weary cease from troubling, and the wicked are at rest." 
 
 And Ruth said, " Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return 
 from following after thee : for whither thou goest, I will go : 
 and where thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall be my 
 people, and thy God my God : where thou diest, I will die, and 
 there will I be buried. And the Lord do so to me, and more 
 aiso, if aught but death part thee and me." 
 Vive V Amour 1 
 
Randolph Publishing Co. 
 
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 AND CHARACTER, BY UNUSUALLY ABLE AUTHORS ; AMONG OTHERS, THOSE 
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 WORLD'S BEST THINKERS, FOR HIS WRITINGS POSSESS A MAGNETIC CHARM, 
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 BARELY EQUALLED, BY ANY AUTHOR OF THE CENTURY. 
 
 SPECIAL TRADE LIST. 
 
 Special Notice. — This list of works will hereafter bear no other imprint 
 than that of this honse, into whose hands they have been placed by their sole 
 proprietor and author. Our terms are cash with the order, in any quantity 
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 possible loss, else such orders will not be filled. 
 
 This series of superb and extraordinary works, constituting the Randolph 
 Library, written by a man whose genius and power — notwithstanding the pur- 
 posed neglect of past years, springing from the little rivalry of infinitely 
 smaller men — is now acknowledged to be of the first grade and rank of the 
 world's best writers, now or heretofore. 
 
 I. 
 
 CASCA LLANNA; LOVE, WOMAN, MARRIAGE. The Grand Secret. 
 
 A Book for those who have Hearts. By Casca Llanna. 
 
 This is the ablest and the grandest Book on Love, Man, "Woman, the Laws 
 of Affection and Marriage, that ever fell from human pen. No description, 
 critique, or synopsis can begin to do justice to the mighty work, which ought 
 to be bound in gold and be on the table of every man, woman, and youth in 
 the land and in the world. It is an exhaustive and large work, yet is sold at 
 $2.50. 
 
 SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Chap. I. — Love, Wealth, Power, — a mighty Lesson. The two Sphinxes: 
 Woman, Fascination. True and False Love, — their lines of difference. 
 Some very peculiar ideas about women. Female nature superior to male, 
 and why. Test of a genuine Love. Passion-love. Curious notions of 
 Noyes, Smith, Swedenborg, aed some spiritualistic affinitists on love, — and 
 bad ones, — some of them. "Women suffer less and are more cruel in love 
 
matters than men." Is it true? If so, why? Signs of a false lore, and a 
 true one. 
 
 Chap. II. — The one great human want is love. "Why ? Happiness im- 
 possible without a love to crown life. Women worse off than men. She 
 must have love or die! Men satisfied with Passion, but women never, 
 Why? Magnetic attraction. Physical aspects of Love. Its celestial chem- 
 istry, — a grand secret and hint to every woman, and lover, and husband, 
 too, — not to be neglected. One of Love's Hidden Mysteries, and a won- 
 derful one. Conditions of Love. Why we are not loved. Divorce Sharp- 
 ers. " Passional Attraction." The Miser on the Desert. A Wonderful 
 Dream. Why a Seduced Wife can never be happy with her Seducer. The 
 Laws of Amatory Passione. 
 
 Chap. III. — Strange Love-origin of crime, — curious. Why a loved 
 wife can never be Seduced. No wife who is loved can ever be led astray. 
 Why no husband can prevent her going aside unless he does love her. A 
 hint for Husbands, — and a terrible fact. A fallacy exploded. Marks ot 
 Love, — The Mystery of Mysteries! How wives are slain; how hus- 
 bands make them false ! Seduction by condolence ! New readings of old 
 words. The quietus of Anti-Marriageists. Whoever cannot weep is Lost ! 
 Why Libertinage can never satisfy or pay. The death-blow to " Free Love." 
 The Home argument ! A Love Pang worse than triple death. Jealousy. 
 From Parent to Child. Theories of Soul-origin. A curious thing about 
 Parentage. A Strange Mystery of Fatherhood. Secret and Mysterious 
 cause of Adultery. 
 
 Chap. IV. — Necessity of returned Love. Who wins a body loses ; who 
 wins a soul wins all ! ! a strange, but mighty rule of Love ! The Vermicular 
 Philosophers. Why Free Lovers always come to grief! The 11th and 12th 
 Commandments. Passional dangers of Eating-houses! "The long and 
 short of it." Moments of very strange, wonderful, and mystic beauty in all 
 women. The mystery of Vampirism, — a terrible revelation ! Picture of a 
 vampire woman. How to tell them. Picture of a love-laden woman. 
 True Womanhood, and its counterfeit. A true woman's Love. Men cannot 
 call out love ; but can kill it quickly. Why? The three things essential to 
 call out woman's love ! ! 
 
 Chap. V. — A strange, weird Power of the human soul. The sunbursts of 
 Love in the heart-reft and lonely! The Solar Law of Love. A Vampire. 
 The Better " Something." The Bridal Hour, and the fearful "Afterwards." 
 An unsuspected, terrible counterfeit of Love. Legend of the Wandering Jew, 
 and Herodias, his mate. " Circles," " Sorosis," and the Circean Sisterhood. 
 Protection from Vampire Life leeches. How these are created by Parents not 
 loving each other. Singular fact and a Plea for the fallen woman. Actual 
 Vampirism, a case described. Spider-women. Kidney troubles indicate Love 
 troubles also. The triple form of Love, — a new revelation. The kind of 
 Love that sets us crazy ! Love tides. Proof of Love-adaptedness. Love 
 and Friendship, — the difference. Eternal Affinityism dissected. A grand 
 Love-Truth. 
 
 ^hap. VI. — New definitions of Marriage, — Love a fluid 2Ether ! ! Ori- 
 gin of Vampire Life, — how they destroy plant and animal life. Why loving 
 wives and husbands fall. A Test. Genius, Love, and Passion go together. 
 Why? The Genius-producing Law. The Law of Social Joy. A chapter full 
 of redemptive counsel for those wrecked on Love's storm-lashed racks. 
 Vivat ! 
 
 Chap. VTI. — Love's Chemistry, — very curious, but very true. Love's 
 double nature. Magnetic, Electric, and Nervous bases of the grand Passion ! 
 Law of Tidal Love. The Poison flow. Attraction of Passion. Chills and 
 Fevers of true Affection ! Immortalization. Difference between male and 
 female existence. Strange. What a woman never forgets, or forgives. To 
 Husbands and Lovers. Words never to be forgotten by either. 
 
 Chap. VIII. — Goodness alone is Power. Brain versus Heart ! Knowl- 
 
3 
 
 edge is strength, not power! Head versus Heart "Women. Grooves, 
 Moods, Phases of Love. How Love requires but one second to change to 
 deadly Hatred. A Mystery. Isabella of Spain, and Marfori, her lover. How 
 the Franco-Prussian War resulted from their loving. Singular fact about a 
 woman's Magic Photographic power. Darwin of the "Monkey-origin of 
 Man " on trial. His acquittal. A Hint to Parents. 
 
 Chap. IX. — Why women are ill, but should not be. Confectionery and 
 Love. Drugged Candy. An unsuspected rock on which lovers are wrecked. 
 Mental Sex, not physical, is what men love most. About woman's dress, as 
 Love creators. A mistake about women which most men make. Another 
 word for the " Strange Woman." Why women complain, and why wives die 
 early ! Extremes : Shakerism — Freeism. Caution to all. 
 
 Chap. X. — Divorce : Hereditary Bias. The Love-cure. An Old Friend 
 in a New Dress. Why boy-babies are kissed more than girl infants. Why 
 girl-babies reverse the business after the second year. Camp-meeting and 
 Ball-room Loves. Another Mystery. People who are Love-starved. The 
 Affection-Congress, — the Conductor, the Train, the Passengers, and the Ar- 
 rival. A splendid series of Facts for the Married. 
 
 Chap. XI. — A New Discovery in Love, and a great one too! To a Hus- 
 band ! To a Lover ! Jealousy exists without Love ! Love may exist with- 
 out Jealousy. Gems of rare Truth. How to recover when Love-exhausted. 
 Beginning of Souls. Why Foeticide, at any stage, is worse than adult Mur- 
 der ! Freezing of Affection. The Sad Story of a Heart ! What a Man said 
 about it. A Persian Poet's plea for " Free Love." Its Refutation. Rome 
 Before the Caesars. 
 
 Chap. XII. — The age of " Brass." Why Mutilates cannot Love ! Why a 
 Woman recognizes Genuine Manhood. "The Origin of Evil." "Organic" 
 Love. Why no Man can respect a " Mistress." Why a "Mistress" cannot 
 be Happy ! Something concerning Wedded Life, very seldom thought of. 
 
 Chap. XIII. — A Piece of a Man ! Wife versus "Kept Miss." Selecting 
 Partners : the bad rule and the good one. Pre-nuptial Familiarities. Marie 
 and her "Husband!" Keep Cool. How a Wife bore a Christ-like Infant! 
 Amativeness, tame and wild, — their effects. Eternal Affinity is infernal non- 
 sense ! Why ? A novel idea of how Eternity may be Passed. An idea of a 
 new and better method of Divorce. " Complex Marriage " in Heaven, — a 
 curious notion. Why Great Men and Women are often Sensualists. Did 
 ever a woman forgive a man's preference of a Rival. Can she ? 
 
 Chap. XIV. — A Penny's Worth of Wit, and what came of it ! Dimity 
 vs. Divinity! One-sided Love, and Single-sided Marriage. The Piggitude 
 of Husbands " (?). What a Sensible Woman said about Love-making Men! ! 
 Wives Beware ! How to Make Him Love Her ! ! Denial, — its fruits. The 
 Great Question Direct. Its Answer ! How to Make Her Love Him ! ! No 
 Ugly Women. All are Beautiful, somehow ! All Women Demand Home 
 and Homage. No one can Seduce a Loving Woman. Why ? Potiphar's 
 Wife. How to Conquer by Stooping. Why a Coarse Person can Resist 
 Temptation better than a Fine one. Old Maids ! Old Bachelors ! What 
 Sappho said on Love ; her Poem. 
 
 Chap. XV. — The Long-haired Philosophers on Love; Mr. Boarland and 
 Miss Green. Ascent, Descent ; a Great New Truth, for Wives and Hus- 
 bands. How the Coarse Feeds upon the Fine, — the Stronger on the Weaker 
 one. Who are StrictJy Human, and who are not. Anatomy of several grades 
 of Professional Love-ists. Honeymoonness versus Settle-downity ! Defini- 
 tions : Strength, Force, Energy, Power, Esteem, Friendship, and Passion. 
 Unless you love you can't be great, or even good. How to Reconstruct a 
 Wife. Love and the other, — in ancient Pompeii. 
 
 Chap. XVI. — Antagonisms. Stormy Love ; its uses. A Defence of Adam, 
 — premier. Who Falls by Love, by Love must Rise ! ! Skeletons in People's 
 Closets, — and our own. Copy-ists. Hero- Worship, — its Folly. Why? 
 Anatomization of a Hero ! Picture of a Modern " Husband ! " Why Lincoln 
 
was a Great Man. St. Peter and Paddy O'Rafferty ! What befell an Afflnity- 
 ist in Same Company. James Fisk, Jr. His Love-power, and Career. Hia 
 Parentage, Nature, Character. The Grand Secret of his wonderful Success ! 
 What the Feronee Lady said about Fisk, Vanderbilt, Butler, and Forney. 
 
 Chap. XVII. — Woman's Eyes, and How to Read Them. The curious 
 conditions of Winning a Woman. Her Rule of Safety, — Powerful. The 
 Grand Magnetic Law. The Rule and Law of Ruin ; also the Rule and Law 
 of Right. How a false step photographs itself and the Party — in her eye — 
 an Egyptian secret ! The distrusts of love-life, and their causes. The deeper 
 meanings of Love ! Descensive and Ascensive Passion. " The mother-in- 
 law Curse." Admiral Verhuel — the father of Napoleon III. The Louisiana 
 Belle and what befell her ! The Male and Female Worlds distinct. New Fact — 
 Woman's rights destroys marriage. ' ' Who's been here since I've been gone ? " 
 Chemical love. Secret of absolute love power. 
 
 Chap. XVIII. — " Spiritual or Mediumistic marriages," a concubinic Sham I 
 Madame George Sands' Consuelo Love-theory — rejected. Personal Earth- 
 quakes and Periodic Excesses. True Love renders us malaria-proof — 
 Singular Fact ! Debauchees and the Parasites that attack them ! Why insects 
 and beasts prefer human prey to all other — A Strange and vast discovert ! 
 Lust produced by animalcule. Another Discovery — and how some little 
 worms brought on the War in Europe ! How to make Home happy ! — a new 
 recipe. Want, and what it does! The Seducer's Wiles. A Woman's Story, 
 and a sad one. The 1st, 2d, and last grand duty of every husband living. 
 
 Chap. XIX. — How meat hurts our souls at times unless properly 
 slaughtered — which it seldom is ! ! A fact for Legislation — How a wicked 
 cook magnetically injures our food. Ethereal action of Love. An Extraor- 
 dinary Love Mystery revealed. How Slovenliness kills affection ! The 
 Suffrage Problem. The New Departure. About Relationship, very curious ! 
 Touch ! Good women get the worst husbands ; Bad men, the worst wives. 
 The general Mixed-upness. Boy and Girl love. Something for Everybody. 
 
 Chap. XX. — The Girl and Bride of * the Period. What's up? Why 
 Honeymoons turn bitter so quickly ! Curious causes of Female Whims 
 and Oddities. Scarcity of real Friendship. The Love Key. The Seven 
 Devils. The King Passion. Amative Love Passion beyond the grave ! ! 
 Woman's Grand power. Ben Eli's Marrowy letter. 
 
 Chap. XXI. — Dead-level love. Tiffs and spats. Husbandic Rules, 
 which husbands neglect — and pay for doing it. Married celibates. Angu- 
 larities. More about Eyes. Blondes and Brunettes — their relative love- 
 power and value as Wives — A very curious analysis worth much to those 
 concerned!! Black Eyes, and the " De'il." Blondes resist outward pressure 
 better than Brunettes. Brunettes fall from within quicker than Blondes. 
 Why, in both cases. Singular ! Astounding theory concerning Brunettes — 
 Have they all Black man's blood in their veins ? The question and its answer ! 
 Blondes love more than one — at one time. Brunettes one only : — Their 
 Fire-Packed Souls ! Their relative love and revenge power ! A Brunette's 
 love. Its intensity. Blonde love — its superior delicacy. Disadvantages of 
 the Ruddy. Brunette love, Sense- Subduing ; Blonde love, Soul-Subduing ! 
 Brunette's never vampiral. Blondes are, and a startling fact ! Their relative 
 immmunity from varied diseases ! A widow's and widower's chances of mar- 
 riage better than those of single persons ! Curious reasons. Cotton- Aids. 
 How to win a true man! A "Case." Male Vampires. Little women have 
 advantages. Why? Reconstruction of Dead-Loves. How? Loftier Gospel. 
 New England Love ! Comparative deaths of the wives of light and dark 
 men. Whose children live longest — and Why ! 
 
 Chap. XXII. — How we sigh for the old loves! Prodigal Wives and 
 Husbands. Meddling "Friends." Dangers of unrequited Love! The 
 Awakening. Never Make your loves Public ! Watching a wife — and what 
 came of it ! ! What befell Mr. Connor — and his trotcsers — while watching 
 his wife! — The place of sighs ! — a touching story of "Lost Souls." The 
 
5 
 
 "All- Eight fallacy exploded. The Social Evil! — a chapter of which the 
 Author is proud — and his readers will be glad. 
 
 Chaps. XXIII. and XXIV. — Pre-nuptial Deceptions, sure to be found out ! 
 Complaining Marriagees. Necessity of loving some one. Dissection of an 
 Atheistic Libertine. The Upper Faith. The Dog Nature. Temptation. 
 The True Bill. Bad Marriage-horrors! The Magic- Power of dress. "Wife- 
 neglecting husbands. Woman's love — a Poem. Evidences of high civiliza- 
 tion from a savage's point of view. A rebuke to the 19th Century. Ig- 
 norant oners and foolish acceptances. Wedded Licensees. — Impure brides, — 
 Discovered. The Married Eights of Man. What a Turk told the Author 
 about Women — New and very good ! How the great are fooled by the 
 little. How the best women must act queer and offish at times. — A Hard 
 " Case." No Atheist a full man. Hopes fixed on inappreciates. No man 
 can endure neglect. A powerful female advantage ! A powerful male 
 one ! Stingy husbands ! How husbands can re-win the wife's love ! A 
 splendid resort ! ! 
 
 A story and sermon concerning " the animiles what went out for to fight." 
 The fight and what came of it. Singular fact about jealousy. " Only 
 once ! — that won't count much !" Won't it ? Can a lover trust a woman who 
 deceives her husband ? Social Brigands — their own worst foes. Why. 
 
 Chap. XXV. — A bit of the author's life history. What love is like. 
 Human Besponsibility. Vastness of the human soul! "She was all the 
 world to Me ! * A Heart Poem No libertine can evoke real Love. Modern 
 Love! Sensitiveness — its advantages. The seven Points — this alone is 
 worth the cost of the book to every woman. Something for wives ; do. for hus- 
 bands. "When her soul's at work!" The distributive Offices of woman's 
 Being. The human Telegraphic system. Its wonders. Sexburg and Scoun- 
 drelton. Counterfeit kisses. "Opportunity." The eeal kiss ! Its meaning. 
 Grand! When friendships fail! " Bitter Beer ! " Home! Sweet Home! 
 Its Joys. "Like a gentle summer rain ! " A Poem. The twain who truly love. 
 Vive L' Amour! Einis. 
 
 II. 
 
 LOVE : ITS HIDDEN HISTOEY. THE MASTEE PASSION. A Book 
 for Woman, Man, Wives, Husbands. The Loving and the Unloved. 
 Also Female Beauty and Power. Their Attainment, Culture, anb 
 Eetention. By Paschal B. Eandolph. 
 
 "Hearts? Hearts? 
 "Who speaks of breaking Hearts ? " 
 
 Sixth Edition. Price, §2.25. Post free. 
 
 Of this volume, reprinted from the large octavo edition, nothing need he 
 said; for "Sixth Edition" tells its own story. It differs entirely from the 
 preceding work, and covers totally different grounds. Together, these two 
 works embrace more on love and its laws than all the other works extant ; 
 and it will be many a long year before another man arises endowed with the 
 superlative power and genius of producing anything comparable with these 
 two Master Volumes of the ages. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. — What is Love ? Eeply — All of us born with a certain 
 amount of love in us. Passion is not love, but love is Passion! "Free 
 Love " Infernalisms. Life and Love a desperate game. True Love and its 
 counterfeits. Prudery. Why young girls " Fall." Magnetic Love. Why 
 the wedded disagree — a curious cause — and unsuspected! Abortionists 
 — the infamous tribe. Love's Hidden Mysteries. The TEN great Eules and 
 Laws thereof! She stoops to conquer! Dress — Silence — as Powers of 
 
Love. Vampires life-leeches. Soul-devourers. Test of True Lore. 
 Jealousy. Suspicion. When woman is divine, and how to make her so. 
 
 Chap. II. — The wife's great fault and oversight. Adultery. The kiss. 
 A woman's idea of Love. Doggish husbands. Blind Tom and the Monkey 
 boy. Love an Element. Why she "can't bear him!" Why he "hates 
 her!" Divorce. "Spirit medium" frauds. "Love powders." Dragon's 
 blood. The Heart Song. Barn-yard Love Philosophers. "I've fallen — 
 again ! " Passion in Men and Women. Song of the Forsaken. Laughing 
 Scandal. Sunshine. Sugar-life. 
 
 Chap. III. — Perverted Magnetisms. Magnetic Poisons. Uterine diseases : 
 undreamed-of causes of such. Complaints of women. Vulgar natures. 
 Love dependent on victuals and drink. The Song of Wedded Misery. 
 Vicarious Love — Wretchedness. Real Marriage — What it is, and is not ! 
 Meddling People. Love song of the Soul. 
 
 Chap. IV. — Power of words — A startling truth. Air; the supreme joy 
 of life. Curious but true ! — Oxygen ! ! — a Love creator ! The two Babies. 
 A sad, sad story. Nellie and the nickering candle. Consumption. Affec- 
 tion ; Love ; the difference between. Love and provender ! The secret sin ! 
 The Proper Study of Mankind is — Woman ! 
 
 Chap. V. — Origins of the Black, Red, and White races. Differences 
 between the sexes. " Blue Pill for Breaking Hearts." Unwelcome Love no 
 love at all. Forced attentions and other Poisons. Dark people healthier 
 than light ones. Why ? Modern marriage not a Bed of Roses. Why ? The 
 wonders of a woman. Nuts for married people. False divorce. Helpless- 
 ness of woman. Men of lofty soul love simple women best. Why ? Actual 
 Marriage means reciprocateness. Why a woman who bears a child by p, 
 dark man can never thereafter bear a light one. Transfusion. Temptati'.n 
 — and how to resist it. Magnetism. Mingling. Morbid husbands. 
 
 Chap. VI. — How to win a husband's love. The Three Oriental Love 
 Secrets. An excellent, but strange, revelation. Magnetic Will and Love 
 Power. Love Starvation — and how to cure it ! The Seven Rules for Hus- 
 bands — good ones to the wise. Mrs. Grundy. Free will. John and Sally. 
 "Animality." The other side. Tides of Passion and Love. The- Social 
 Evil. "When it is dark" — a mournful tale. Incompatibility. Why relations 
 hate each other. Physical bases of human love. Seven Laws of Love. 
 Vampires. The author's experience. — Why he loves a pretty woman. 
 " When the Sultan goes to Ispahan ! " Funny but dangerous. 
 
 Chap. VII. — Woman is Love Incarnate, only men don't realize it. Dim- 
 ity versus Divinity. Hearts for sale ! Woman fails to know her Power. 
 Love an Art. The Magic Ring — very strange. The Love-cure. Mother-in- 
 law — the trouble they make. Once in a whilish love of husbands. Lola 
 Montez. The Christ-imaged child. Wonderful law. Love storms, gates, 
 tempests. How to subdue wild husbands. Woman's second attack wins and why. 
 
 Chap. VIII. — Love not to be forced on either side. What Leon Gozlan 
 said "about women. "Infernal fol-de-rolisms," "Legal" violence! How 
 Love-matches are broken off. The Lesson it teaches. The French " Girl's" 
 curious Prayer. Beauty; its laws. Insanity. An invaluable chapter on 
 the art and means of increasing Female Beauty ; translated from the French 
 of Dr. Cazenave. Special instructions for beautifying skin, hair, eyes, 
 teeth — in short, the Perfect Adornment of Women. 
 
 Chap. IX. — Good-humor. Home. The true life. Heart versus Brain. 
 The Woman condemned to be strangled, and how she was saved. The three 
 Lessons. A latter-day Sermon — Text : " Jordan is a hard road to travel." 
 The Castaways. Singular. Magdalen. Scandal and Gossip. What Echo 
 said. The Baby World. A thrilling Sermon by a reformed Prize Fighter. 
 A splendid Poem — Swinburn. 
 
 Chap. X. — "Eternal Affinityism," and Chureh-ortion. Honeymoons 
 versus sour Syrup. Marriage in 1970. One happy man; the curious reason 
 why. "Doctors." Science — a wonderful case of its mighty Power 
 
Cyprians not all bad or lost. Why? Monogamy and Amative Stimulants. 
 The finest race upon the Planet. Propagation of Heroes — how it is accom- 
 plished ! The Eye as an Index of Character — Gray, Blue, Hazel, Black 
 eyes. The Laugh-cure in a new phase. Matrimonial career. Gossiping. 
 Healthy Love. Sex in Nature. Marriage of Light and Matter. Music is 
 Sexive. Three classes of Women. Whom not to wed. 
 
 Chap. XL — Married Celibates. Friendliness. Fretting. "Lip Salve.' J 
 Boston Philosophy — Soul-Marriage ! A Fashionable Lady's Prayer. 
 Prayer of tho Girl of the Period. Hottentot's Heaven. Voudoo John, and 
 Female Subjugation by Black-magic Arts. Breastless Ladies. How Wives 
 are Poisoned! 
 
 Chap. XII. — The Fountain of Love. How to remedy vital exhaustion. 
 What to eat to gain Love-Power. Power of a Loving Woman. Her child. 
 Excess. Promiscuous " Love." " When Sweetness reigns in Woman ! " 
 A half Man ; and how to pick him out. Ankles. Genius and Wedlock. 
 Why the Talented are generally Wretched in the Marriage State. Singular 
 facts, and Singular Faults in Women. Bitter Experience. A Singular Pa- 
 per upon Incest. Non- reciprocation — and its cause — and cure. Childless 
 Couples — Causes — Cure. Fault-finding. Jealousy ; its cause and cure. 
 The Rule and Law of Human Power, or Genius. 
 
 The book also contains special articles concerning why wives hate their 
 husbands. Singular causes of wedded misery, and its cure. A hint to 
 mothers. Hint to unloved wives. Gusty love. When woman has most con- 
 quering power. The stormy life. The magnetic attack. Sex and passion 
 after we are dead. Old-maidhood, and how to avoid it — the how ! [The 
 work called " Seership," containing the Oriental Woman's Art of Love, and 
 direct statement and application of the seven magnetic laws of love, was 
 put to press after the above volumes were written. Its price is three dollars, 
 and can be had only direct from this office.~\ 
 
 Of the large double volume, octavo work on "Love and the Master-Pas- 
 sion," the universal testimony is that no other hook in any language is so full, 
 plain, clear, explicit, and exhaustive. Its price is $2.25. Post free, direct 
 from this office only. 
 
 III. 
 
 AFTEli DEATH; OR, DISEMBODIED MAN. The Human Soul and 
 its Destiny after Death. A Revelation of the Ethereal Uni- 
 verse, CONCERNING THE LOCATION, GEOGRAPHY, TOPOGRAPHY, AND 
 
 Scenery of the Upper World; the Occupation, Habits, Customs, 
 Modes of Living, and Transmundane Destiny of the Human Soul. 
 Also concerning Sex, and its Uses after Death; affirming that 
 it does exist, and that it will remain a human happiness forever. 
 Fifth Edition. Price, $2.25. Postage free. 
 
 What I teas is passed hy ; 
 What I am away doth fly ; 
 What I stiall be few can see; 
 Yet in that my heauties he. 
 
 Song of the Soul. 
 
 Chapter I. — Concerning the God. New Definition of Deity. His 
 Nature and Dwelling-place. Existence of a Third Grand Universe. Are 
 Souls as well as Bodies originated here on earth? A New Mental Power. 
 The Eternal Throne. Its Locality. The Absolute Existence of a Magnifi- 
 cent, but Strange, Supernal or Soul Country. 
 
 Chap. II. — Why is Man Immortal ? Reply. Singular Proofs. Invisible 
 People. What is God? Another Idea. The Answer. The Exact Locality 
 of Hell. White-blooded People of the Future. An Astonishing Prophecy, 
 The Author not dependent on Theurgy for his belief, nor for this book 
 
8 
 
 Value of Clairvoyance in comparison therewith. The Devil — his origin. 
 "The Redeemed." Exact locality of "Heaven." About the "Golden 
 Streets." 
 
 Chap. III. — The Rationale of Going Up. Matter's immateriality. About 
 the first Human Couple. Extent of the Sky. Origin of Negroes and other 
 races not identical. Revelation of the Grand Secret of the Ages. Tailed 
 men. The Origin of Man. The Development Theory true. 
 
 Chap. IV. — An extraordinary chapter. Analysis of a Human Soul. 
 Why they are Death-proof. Singular Disclosures concerning the parts and 
 organs of a Soul — its eyes, legs, mouth, teeth, head, hair, arms, feet, stom- 
 ach, lungs, hands. The Sex question settled. Coquettes and Dandies in the 
 other life. Souls' Dress and Clothing. The Fashions among them. Do we 
 carry our deformities with us there ? What they do in Soul-land. A scep- 
 tical person's arrival there. His Surprise. The Soul and its seat in the Body. 
 Dancing, Singing, Playing there. Idiots. Thieves. " Still-borns." Cyp- 
 rians. Maniacs. Insane. Murderers. Ministers. Suicides and Mon- 
 strosities — when in the Soul-world. Why Human Beings sometimes 
 resemble Beasts. A very Curious Revelation. Some Still-borns immortal, 
 others not so. Why? "Justification of Suicide." Consequences of Self- 
 destruction. The effects of Onanism and Masturbation on the Soul. "Bad 
 Women " there. The Judgment-day. 
 
 Chap. V. — Are Animals Immortal ? The Budhistic Doctrine of the Soul's 
 Absorption into Deity settled. Phantomosophy. A Wonderful Power of the 
 Disbodied People. Its Explanation. The Rationale of Delirium Tremens. 
 A Singular Pact. How Thoughts are read. The Explanation of Memory. 
 A new Revelation. Genius. A new Faculty. Creatures in the Upper 
 Worlds of Disembodied Humanity. Phantom Dogs and Birds. Soul Magic. 
 
 Chap. VI. — Some very Startling Questions, and their Answers. Rela- 
 tionship in "Heaven." The " Affinity" Question Settled. Is Death Painful? 
 Death by Hanging and Drowning. The Sensation thereof. Bad Marriages 
 here. Their effects over there. The Fate of Duelists. Soldiers. Execu- 
 tioners. Of those who die of fright. Of Horror. Of Drunkenness. The 
 fate of Genius and its singular Origin. Obsessions. Crime-engendering 
 Dangers. Haunted Houses. Haunted People. A curious cause of Mental 
 Suffering. Music in the Upper World. Why do people marry there ? The 
 Reply. 
 
 Chap. VII. — Location, Direction, Distance, Formation, and Substance of 
 the Soul-land. A new Planet near the Sun. The Soul World tangible and 
 real. The Throne of God, its nature, bulk, and locality. Location of the 
 final home of Souls. The Origin of the first Human Soul. Uncreated Souls. 
 The rain of world-souls and soul-seeds. Location of the seven grand spheres 
 or zones. Length of an eternity. Our Soul World visible on clear nights. 
 Its depth and dimensions. Distance and substance of the Soul World. How 
 we go to and from there. Plants and animals of Soul-land. Scenery about 
 the Spiritaul Sun. Boreal and Austral suns now forming at the poles. Vam- 
 pires. Weight of Soul. 
 
 In this chapter occur the following questions and their answers : What and 
 where, in the Soul World, Morning Land, Better Country, Aidenn or home 
 of the Soul, are the spheres or dwelling-place of the disbodied human being? 
 What is it made of? In what way is it seeming or real, distinct from matter, 
 and the Great Ethereal Ocean? Is it subject to Gravitation? How do we 
 get there ? And back here ? Is there any Death up there ? Do we sleep ? 
 What are our occupations? Do sects abound there as here? How do we 
 live when there ? What is the size of a disbodied Soul ? Can a Soul pene- 
 trate Solid Matter and exist? Can a Soul be annihilated? Could a man 
 exist after being blown from a cannon's mouth ? Are we there as here char- 
 acterized by red, black, or light hair ? Complexion? Slenderness? Obesity? 
 Tallness ? Shortness ? Do we use vocal language ? Are there Kings and 
 Rulers there ? Books ? The famous persons of earth ? Are they so there ? 
 
Are nations distinct? Where are the dead of a million years ago? The 
 jugglery of physical manifestations. Vegetation of the Soul World. The 
 chemical origin of sin. Heaven aristocratic, not democratic. Rationale) 
 op Vampirism, and who the Vampires are. 
 
 Chap. VIII. Spiritual Rivers — How we get to Soul Land — Sects in 
 Heaven — Fairy People — The Complexion Question in Soul Life — The 
 Languages used in Soul Land — Age in Soul Life — The Question of Relation- 
 ship in Soul Life — Our Occupations there — Our Names in Heaven — Number 
 of people in Soul Life — Good Peter Cooper the Millionnaire — Sustenance, , 
 food, drink, curious — Very — " Free Love' ' — Singular. 
 
 Negroes are not Black in Soul Land, nor have they woolly hair — Color cf 
 a Soul — Some parents not related to their Children — Do we retain our names 
 in Soul Land — The Reply — How Savage Women obtain Infants in the Upper 
 Land. 
 
 Chap. IX. The Heaven of Savages — First Grand Division of the Soul 
 Land — Indians, Negroes, Chinese, Tartars, Finns, Kanakas, Greeks, English, 
 Swedes, and the Democracy of other Tribes — Music up there, and how made 
 
 — Houses, Towns, Cities, in the upper World, how built, and of what material 
 
 — Breath up there — The Female Thermometer — Curious but true — A 
 Wonderful Upper Land Fact — Jewels there — Schools in Heaven — Effect 
 of Certain Diseases hereupon us when we get to Soul Land — Life in Soul 
 Land — Scenery in Grand Division No. 1. — Occupations pursued in Aidenn — 
 And the reason why — Breathing Up There — Luxury — Privacy — Secret 
 Joys in Soul Life — Definition of the Sin against the Holy Ghost — Its terrible 
 consequences, and the millions of people who commit it here — some through 
 ignorance. 
 
 Chap. X. Extraordinary — Very — The question of Sex and Passion in 
 Soul Life — An astounding Disclosure thereanent — Why we shake hands — 
 Kiss — The Philosophy of Contact — Analysis of the Kiss — And what it con- 
 veys — Are children born in the Upper Land — New and Strange uses for 
 the Human Organs when we are dead — The Philosophy of Mingling — 
 Curious, still more so — Loves of the Angels — Thrilling. In this chapter the 
 long-mooted question, "Do we retain Sex, and all that the term implies, 
 after death ? Do we retain amative passion beyond the grave ? " are triumphantly 
 solved in the affirmative, and the Reasons why are given. These chapters 
 have created more talk than any similar amount of printed matter ever pub- 
 lished in this country. 
 
 Chap. XL Same singular subject continued — Certain Organic Func- 
 tions in the Spirit World — Eating, etc., there — Analysis of a Soul — Its bones, 
 etc. — The actual existence of the Trees of Life and Knowledge — Sensual 
 Joys of the Upper Life — Their thrilling ecstacy — Heaven as seen May 22, 
 1866 — Institutions, employments, and pleasures of the Upper Land — De- 
 scription of the people there dead 10,000 years ago — The coming man — Born 
 and almost here — A Journey to the oth Grand Division of Soul Land — 
 A Scene in Heaven — The Dead of long ago — Description of the women 
 there. 
 
 Chap. XII. Extent of the Universe — Description of Heaven — Curious 
 Power of a Soul's Eye — Animals and Birds in that Grand Division of the 
 Soul Land — Animals in soul Land — A Palace there — Lectures — Studies in 
 Heaven — Loveometers and Soul-measures — Contents of a museum there — 
 Marriage up there — Love also — Duration of an " Eternal Affinity. " 
 
 Chap. XIII. Why "Eternal Affinity "is not true — The Origin of 
 Souls — The part each Parent plays in the Creation of a Child — Very 
 Startling and Strange — Lust and its Singular Cause — An unsuspected 
 one — Bad Marriages — Their Effects on us after Death — A Survey of Mar- 
 riage Land — Why Souls Assail Marriage — Conjugal Wars and Disagree- 
 ments — The Road to the Remedy — Announcement of a New Work by the 
 Author of this, — Why Souls differ — A New Phase and Statement of the 
 Metempsychosis Idea — No Deformities carried with us beyond the Grave. 
 
10 
 
 The Second Grand Division of Soul Land — Extraordinary Account of the 
 Region of Phantasies therein — The Domain of Illusion — Spectral Ships, 
 Boats, etc. — Sailors — Ports, Oceans, Seas, Brokers, Jews, Hunters, Indians, 
 Races, Games, and Life there — Vastation — The Sectarian Realm of Illusion 
 
 — Hell — Infants a Span long — Very Singular — The Song of the Soul. 
 Chap. XIV. Sectarian Heavens, and the Strange and Singular Discussions 
 
 that take place there — The List — The Mahommedans in Soul Land — Their 
 Advantages over certain Christians — The Third Grand Division and its 
 Wonderful Sanatoria — Hospitals for the Sick — And who they are — 
 
 — The Fourth Grand Division of Soul Land — The " Spheres " — The Heaven 
 of Half men — The Miscegens in Heaven — The Mystical Blendings (mar- 
 riage) in Morning Land — The Sciences taught in the Upper Divisions. 
 
 Chap. XV. Origin of the Soul World — The First Two Souls— The 
 terrific, impending, and possible danger of the explosion and total destruction 
 of this earth, by the falling in of the ocean floors upon the molten mass in the 
 bowels of the globe — A Fearful Possibility — An approaching change in the 
 Earth's Axis — The New Planet near the Sun — The New Ring about being 
 thrown off from the Sun — Formation of other Planets by Cometic condensa- 
 tions, and the consequent alterations in the Solar System — Uprising of a 
 New Continent on earth — Destruction of the Asteroids — Discovery of whole 
 hills of gold on earth — How the First Souls discovered the Soul Land, went 
 to, and returned from it — Arrival of a Rev. Gentleman in Soul Land — His 
 astonishment and surprise thereat — This earth a Living Organism — Why. 
 
 Chap. XVI. The Sixth Grand Division of Soul Land — Things taught 
 there — The Origin of all Matter — The Lost Pleiad found — A Lightless 
 Sun — The Law of Periodicity — Soul Storms — Credo — A new revelation 
 of most astounding character. 
 
 The Seventh Grand Division of Morning Land — Its Superlative Glories — 
 Can Man lose or merge his identity in the God-head — A mornful yet glorious 
 fact — A Home for All — All bleeding, breaking hearts — All weary, sorrow- 
 laden souls — What will interest every Man and Woman on the earth — Why 
 a Soul cannot be dismembered or destroyed — Curious — Coming Man — 
 Miscegenation, or the Commingling of Peoples — The Soul's Flight to the 
 Solar Zone and Second Grand Girdle. 
 
 Chap. XVII. Refutation of a popular Error — Has an unfortunate 
 " Social Evil," an immortal soul ? — Reply — A Plea for the Fallen. 
 
 Appendix. A section about "Love and its Hidden History — Its Ebbs and 
 Flows ; its Calms and Blows — Its unsuspected Mystery." 
 
 The profound and world-wide importance of the contents of these sections 
 cannot be over-estimated. The author here reveals discoveries regarding 
 Sex, Marriage, their abuses, and their remedies, which are indeed surprising, 
 and of which the world has never dreamed before. Woman may henceforth 
 cure her own ills, and defy sickness, exhaustion, and lingering death, to which 
 far too many of her sex are, from unsuspected causes, exposed. Let it be well 
 read and studied, and the author hopes that fewer graves of the prematurely 
 dead will mark the churchyards of our land, and fewer wasted, haggard forms 
 move languidly through our streets. 
 
 IV. 
 
 HERMES MERCURIUS TRISMEGISTUS ; (Ter Maximus ! King of 
 Egypt! Melchizedek .') His Divine Pymander. His First Book ; Pymandcr 
 — The Spirit from the Far Heavens ; The Holy Sermon ; The Key ; That 
 God is not Manifest; And yet most Manifest; God; The Song; Truth; 
 The Crater ; The Divine Mind. 
 
 The work is most elegantly gotten up, with beautiful type, tinted paper 
 beveled boards, illuminated title-page and cover; and, independent of its con- 
 tents, it is a rare ornament to any library in the land. 
 
 This most ancient and glorious book ought to be in the house of every 
 
11 
 
 Christian, moral and religious person in the land — especially ministers. Also 
 in those of scoffers, doubters, infidels and skeptics, for it contains what can 
 nowhere else be found. This rare and superb volume also contains the world- 
 famous Asiatic Mystery — the singular and astounding belief and secret doc- 
 trines of the Rosicrucians, Alchemists, Hermetists and other illuminati. Also 
 translations from the Vedas ; Brahm : The Song of Brahm ; and the Smarag- 
 dine Table. It is the quintessence of transcendental Spiritual Philosophy, and 
 in lofty thought and pure morality stands second to no book in the world. 
 Price $2. Postage free. 
 
 V. 
 
 PRE-AD AMITE MAN : The Story of the Human Race from 35,000 to 
 100,000 Years Ago. 
 
 Fifth edition of this World-renowned Classic, on Human Antiquity. 
 By the same author. 
 
 Conceded in France, England, and America, to be the Ablest "Work 
 
 Extant, on the Origin of Man; his Antiquity, and Diverse 
 
 Sources of the varied Human Races. 
 
 Fifth edition. Demonstrating the existence of the Human Race upon the 
 earth 100,000 years ago. " A remarkable book." " We hail this shot from 
 the Fort of Truth ! Shows that men built cities 35,000 years ago ! Extra 
 valuable volume." "Great grasp of thought! Proves Adam was not the 
 first man, nor anything like it! Engrossingly interesting." "The literary 
 and philosophical triumph of the century, written by one of that century's 
 most remarkable men." 
 The title of this work is PRE-AD AMITE MAN: The Story of thb 
 
 Human Race from 35,000 to 100,000 years ago. 
 
 When the gude laird was making Adam, even then the clan Grant was as 
 thick and numerous as the heather on yon hills ! — Bailie Grant. 
 
 I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed, 
 
 Has any Roman soldier mauled or knuckled; 
 For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed, 
 
 Ere Romulus or Remus had been suckled. 
 Antiquity appears to have begun 
 Long after thy primeval race was run. 
 
 Address to a Mcmmy — Horace Smith. 
 
 Price, $1.75. Post free to any address. 
 
 GENERAL SYNOPSIS. 
 Preface. — Authorities consulted. Dedication. 
 
 PART I. — Historico-Chronological. 
 
 Introductory. — Adam not the first man. Men built cities in Asia 35,000 
 years ago. Luke Burke and the credibility of History. The Fate of Genius. 
 The New York " Tribune " and Leonard Horner on Egyptian Pottery 13,500 
 years old. How we know that the Egyptians made Pottery 7,500 years 
 before Adam's date. The Artesian- Well borings of the French Engineers in 
 the Egyptian Delta. Discovery of the colossal statue of Rhampses II., and 
 what followed it. Syncellus and the Chaldean Chronology, stretching back 
 36,000 years. Chinese Kings 18,000 years ago. Pu-An Ku, the original 
 Chinaman, created 129,600 years ago. 
 
 Chapter I. — Adam, Menes, Egypt. Menes (Mizraim) not the grandson 
 of Noah. Rabbinical Forgery Demonstrated. Herodotus and Manetho — 
 their credulity and credibility. The First Man, according to the Egyptians. 
 Bunsen's Deduction that civilized men inhabited the Nilotic lands over 20,000 
 years ago. Persian Chronology — Mahabad, Jy Affram, God, and the First 
 Man. A Heathen's Philosophy. Who built Baalbec and the Pyramids? 
 
12 
 
 \ 
 
 Did God or the gods create Adam? Some curious suggestions. Precarious 
 foundation of Adam and the Adamic theory. 
 
 Chap. II. — Cain, Cain's wife, Lamech's wives — where did they get them? 
 The answer. Pre-Adamitic Nations east of Eden. Job ; who was he ? — 
 certainly not a descendant of Adam. Numerous Scriptural authorities 
 establishing the existence of men not of Adam's race, continued in other 
 chapters. 
 
 Chap. III. — On the banks of the Nile. What an Indian Chief thought of 
 the Shem, Ham, and Japhet tradition. Bronze, Steel, and Glass 4,800 years 
 ago. Are Joppa, Jerusalem, Damascus, Pre- Adamite cities? Philological 
 observations. Specimens of two New Languages now growing. 
 
 Chap. IV. — Spiritism, Table-turning, Rosicrucianism, Philosopher's Stone, 
 and Elixir of Life 3,000 years ago. Negro Kings of Egypt. Has the Negro 
 ever excelled his present condition ? What the Monuments of Beni Hassan 
 say about it. Is Jehovah (Iaveh) and Elohim of Genesis the Eternal God, or 
 an Oriental, mythical god ? The two accounts of Man's Creation from Gen- 
 esis, side by side. Melchizadek, and who he probably was. The Pentateuch. 
 '' There were giants in those days." 
 
 Chap. V. — " Coasting the Headlands of Eternity." A charge against the 
 Jewish Rabbins. Some scriptual corrections. The Kabala, Adam, Eve, and 
 the Devil. Eve's Adultery. Her second crime, and what it was. The sons 
 of Ish. Berosus and the Chaldean Genesis. A fragment of Scandinavian 
 Cosmology from the Prose-Edda. 
 
 Chap. VI. — Cosmogonico-chronological. Cataclysms. 63,000 years of 
 Chinese History. 150,000 of Japanese. 3,000,000 Brahminical. Budhistic 
 fabulous eras. The site of Eden and of Adam's creation. Date of Noah's 
 Flood, 11,812 years ago. Egyptian civilization 12,000 years ago. The 
 original story of the Ark and Deluge. The original Wrestling Jacob. The 
 original Israel. Parallels between the Bible and Oriental Heroes and Events, 
 and identity of names, etc. Curious light on the Ages of the Patriarchs. 
 Sidon. The Priests of Sais. The New Atlantic Isle and Greek History 
 nearly 12,000 years ago. 26,000 years of Human History vs. 35,0C0 years of 
 Civilization. The true story, philosophy, date and effects of the "Flood." 
 
 A NEW AND STARTLING HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 PART II. Ancient Europe. 
 
 Chap. I. Greece and Italy older than Egypt. The Cyclopean structures 
 of Southern Europe. The Egyptian Monuments. Why the Pyramids were 
 built. Pyramids of America. Hieroglyphics. New Deductions. 
 
 Chap. II. The Rise and Fall, the Ebb and Flow of Empires. Assyria, 
 Chaldea, Egypt, Europe Asia's mother. 
 
 Chap. III. The stupendous structures of Etruria ; their styles indicate 
 two distinct nations of antiquity succeeding each other on the same spot, with 
 a vast interval between. 
 
 Chap. IV. The Fictions of Chronology, Ancient and Mediaeval. The 
 Artificial and Mythical Characters of the Principle Epochs of Roman History, 
 Regal, Republican and Imperial. 
 
 Chap. V. Ten thousand years of Italic tradition. The Errors and adjust- 
 ments of the Roman Year and Calendar, from Romulus to Pope Gregory. 
 
 Chap. VI. Silence and Ignorance of the Clerical Writers relative to the 
 most important and curious facts of so-called Contemporaneous History. 
 
 Chap. VII. Ethnological. The Genesis of Nations. 
 
 Chap. VIII. The Gorilla vs. Man. Is the latter but a developed form of 
 the Mammalia? or is he the initial type of a new range of terrestrial exist- 
 ence — of a new class and kingdom of Nature? If the latter, what a future 
 lies before him ! 
 
13 
 
 PART III. Fossil Man. 
 
 Chap. I. Discovery of Human Skeletons in the West Indies, the Kirkdale 
 Cavern, Quebec, Caverne de Enghoule, Florida, and elsewhere, from 50,000 
 to 150,000 years old. Human Remains from Gravel Hills. " Flint Weapons." 
 
 Chap. II. The skeleton of a Whale found, with a human weapon, in a 
 Scotch hill. The fossil Elks and human bones of Ireland. Human remains 
 and Elephant's teeth found in non-tropical climates, indicating an age of 
 38,000 years at least. Mr. Koch and his flint arrow-heads from the "Drift." 
 Human remains found in a Rocky Mountain gold hill. 
 
 Chap. III. John Elliott in the " Geologist " on Fossil Man, and remains 
 found in Durham. The Heathery-Burn Discoveries. Professor Huxley, F. 
 R. S., on the celebrated "Maskham Skull." The Trent Skull and its dimen- 
 sions. Human remains from Neanderthal. The Belgian Skull, found with 
 the Bones of Bears, Hyenas and Elephants. The Massat and Mecklenburg 
 Skeletons. Dr. Schauffhausen on the " Plau Skeleton." The Mewslade 
 Skull. The Sennen Cranium. The Montrose and boat-shaped human skulls. 
 The Estham Skull and its measurement. Skull of a Gorilla compared with 
 that of Man. Skulls from Etruria, and their dimensions. Human Bones from 
 Switzerland. Copenhagen fossil skulls compared with that of an Ashantee 
 Negro. Professor Owen on Ancient Crania. The Engis Skull, "the oldest 
 record of man on earth." The Dolichocephalic crania. Apes, Man, Chim- 
 panzees, Negroes, Table of the oldest human relics found with fossil mammalia. 
 Table of Earliest Evidences of the Human. Race. 
 
 Chap. IV. Proceedings of various Geological Societies, and discoveries 
 of fossil man by their members. " Flints in the Drift." Liverpool, Glasgow, 
 three skulls. Prof. Burk, C. C. Blake, and S. L. Mackie on " Human Fossils." 
 Joseph Prestwick, Esq., on " Fossil Man." The human remains referable to 
 three geological ages back of this present ! John Evans, Paris, Flint Imple- 
 ments. Criel, Flint Hatchets. Rouen, Clermont, Human Remains and Fossil 
 Elephants, Rhinoceros, Oxen and Cats found five hundred and forty feet 
 above high-water mark! English Human Fossils. C. C. Blake on "Past 
 Life in South America." Indian Giants. Apes as large as Man. Professor 
 King on Natural Selection. Darwin's Theory. Dr. Buckner on the Monkey- 
 origin of the Negro and other Men. A host of names in favor of the " Deriva- 
 tive Theory." Human remains in Alluvium. The River-bed Skeleton ! The 
 Leicester Skull and its measurement. 
 
 Chap. V. Per Contra — Prof. Gras v. The Geologist, on the Antiquity 
 of Man. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF THE MAGNETIC UNIVERSE. Seekship. 
 New Edition. A wonderful series of discoveries for self-development 
 in all branches of Clairvoyance, including the astonishing agency of MAGIC 
 MIRRORS ; and how to make them. 
 
 CONTENTS— Part I. 
 Somnambulistic lucidity. Genuine clairvoyance a natural birthright. Two 
 sources of light, astral and magnetic. Why mesmerists fail to produce clair- 
 voyance in their " subjects." Vinegared water, magnets and tractors as agents 
 in its production. Specific rules. Clairvoyance is not spiritualism. Most 
 "clairvoyants" arrant swindlers, quacks, impostors. The false and the true. 
 Psychometry and intuition are not clairvoyance. Mesmeric circles. Eight 
 kinds of Clairvoyance ! Mesmeric coma and magnetic trance. The differ- 
 ence. Effect of lung power. Effect of amative passion on the seer. Dangers 
 to women who are mesmerized. Oriental, European, and American methods. 
 The mirror of ink. How to mesmerize by a common looking-glass. The 
 insulated stool. The electric or magnetic battery. The bar magnet. The 
 
14 
 
 horse-shoe magnet. Phantasmata, Chemism. "Why "Spirits "are said to 
 take subjects away from magnetizers. Curious. Black Magic. Voudoo 
 ("Hoodoo") spells, charms, projects. Very Strange! "Love Powders." 
 The sham, and the terrible dangers of the real. How they are fabricated. 
 Astounding disclosures concerning Voudooism in Tennessee. Proofs. The 
 cock, the conches, the triangle, the herbs, the test, the spell, the effect, the 
 wonderful result. White science baffled by black magic! Mrs. A., the Doc- 
 tor, and the Voudoo Chief. Explanation of the mystery. The degrees of 
 Clairvoyance and how to reach them. The road to power, love, and money. 
 Self-mesmerism. Mesmerism in ancient Egypt, Syria, Chaldea, Nineveh, and 
 Babylon thousands of years ago. Testimony of Lepsius, Botta, Rawlings, 
 Horner, Bunsen, Champollion and Mariette. The Phantorama. Advice to 
 seekers after Seership. 
 
 PART II. — The Magnetic Mirror and its uses. 
 
 Dr. Dee and his magic mirror. Strange things seen in it. Not a spiritual 
 juggle. George Sand. The Count St. Germain, and the Magic Mirror or 
 Spirit-Seeing glass. Jewels used for the same purposes. Hargrave Jennings 
 (the Rosicrucian), On fire. Curious tilings of the outside world, and divine 
 illumination. Cagliostro and his Magic Mirror. Frederick the Great Crystal- 
 seeing Count. American Mirror Seers. Dr. Randolph, in April, '69, predicts 
 the Gold panic of September. Its literal fulfilment. Business men use mir- 
 rors to forestall the markets. Their singular magic. Better and more effec- 
 tive than animal magnetism. Why. Extraordinary method of holding a 
 psycho-vision steady as a picture. Two kinds of mirrors. Crystals. The 
 pictures seen in a magic mirror are not on or in, but above it. Dangers of 
 " Spirit control." Facts. Theory. Constructors of magic mirrors. Fail- 
 ures. Success. Chemistry of mirrors. The Life of Dream and the Street 
 of Chances. The Past, Present, and Future are actually now, because there 
 can be no future to Omniscience. The future embosomed in the Ether, and 
 he who can penetrate that can scan unborn events in the womb of coming 
 time. It can be done, is done, and will be by all who have the right sense. 
 Sir David Brewster, Salverte, Iamblichus and Damascius. A magic mirror 
 stance extraordinary. The Emperor Basil's son is brought to his father in a 
 magic glass by Theodore Santa Baren. Mr. Roscoe's account of a strange 
 adventure of Benvenuto Cellini. What death really is. A new theory ! The 
 phantasmagoria of real things. Absorption. Its use and meaning. Platonic 
 theory of vision. Theory of spiritual sight. Magic and magnetic, one and the 
 same. Statement of the seven magnetic laws of Love. The blonde wife re- 
 wins her straying brunette husband from a brunette rival — from a blonde ri- 
 val. Polarities. Caressive love. The antagonal polar law of love. Back- 
 thrown love. A singular principle. Egyptians. Magic mirrors. Mrs. Pool 
 and Mr. Lane's testimony. How a maiden discovers a lover — a rival — 
 a wrong-doer. Awful magnetic power of an injured woman's " magnetic 
 prayer." Oriental widow finds a husband — having seen him — never having 
 seen him. "The Master Passion." "After Death." Rules and laws of 
 magic mirrors. How to clean and charge them magnetically. The Grand 
 Master, De Novalis. The celebrated " Trinius " Japanese magic crystal globe 
 of San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The price of this work has been fixed at three dollars. It is the only work 
 on the subject now extant in the English language, and incontestably excels 
 either the French, German, Arabic, Syriac, Hindostanee, or the Chaldaic 
 treatises upon the same topic, and is probably the fullest and most perfect com- 
 pilation and exposition of the principia of the sublime science ever penned. A 
 work of this extraordinary character is indeed rare. By the terms made 
 those who want it must avail themselves of this chance at once ! It can only 
 be had direct from our office. 
 
15 
 
 VII. 
 
 2 Vols, in 1. 
 
 THE WONDEEFUL STOEY OF EAV ALETTE. 
 
 Also, The Eosicrucian's Story. Fourth edition. Two vols, in one. 
 
 $1.75. Post free. 
 
 " A Thrilling and Magnetic Volume." " "We admire the Genius who 
 
 WROTE THESE WORKS." "A EOSICRUCIAN EOMANCE, AND THE MOST EX- 
 TRAORDINARY and Thrilling Work ever published in this country." 
 This is a 12mo, 396 pp., one of the most 'wonderful books we ever read; 
 written in plain, vigorous English, and cannot fail to interest any reader who 
 has a love for the marvellous. It is more exciting in its incidents than Bui 
 wer's "Strange Story;" throws into the shade the writings of the German 
 mystics ; and yet the thread of the story, from beginning to end, is nevei 
 broken or stretched beyond the range of probability. Admit the author's 
 premises, and he will carry the reader along with him through all his strange 
 reasonings and descriptions. As a mere story, independent of its peculiar 
 views, it transcends in interest all of the mystical literature of the present 
 day. De Foe's inimitable " Life of Duncan Campbell" is not more fascinat- 
 ing. — Boston Traveller. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Now Eeady. Extraordinary and Thrilling "Work! 
 
 SOUL! 
 
 The Soul-World : the Homes of the Dead. 
 
 The Human Soul; what it is; whence it came; its location in the 
 body ; its passage through death ; whither it goes after death ; 
 what it does ; how it lives ! marriage ln the soul-world ! off- 
 SPRING there ! Eating, drinking, sleeping, after we are dead ! 
 do souls occupy space? does a soul feel heat, cold, get wet ln 
 a storm? What becomes of Dead Children? of Idiots? Lu- 
 natics ? Premature Births ? Heaven ! Hell ! Their nature and 
 location, with scores of equally important and profound questions, are all 
 answered in this most extraordinary and entirely original volume. 
 This is one of the most wonderful books ever printed in this country or any- 
 where else. The author is well known to be one of the most vigorous 
 thinkers, sterling writers, and most graphic delineators, especially of the 
 occult, the weird, and psychological, now on the stage of literary life ; while, 
 as a describer of the inner halls of being, a picturer forth of the soul's deep- 
 est mysteries, no writer has ever surpassed, and but few, if any, ever equalled 
 this wonderfully gifted author. " Spiritualism," with all its declared revela- 
 tions from the so-called departed, has not yet produced anything that can 
 begin to be compared with this book. People who want to know what a 
 soul really is; whereabouts in the body it holds its seat; how it THINKS, 
 FEELS, MOVES, LOOKS, is looked at; how it goes out and comes in; 
 how it sleeps ; how the body dies ; how the soul escapes it ; where it goes to, 
 and what it does ; how it loves, marries ; offspring in the other world, etc., 
 — should not fad to read this book. A revelation made by the dead to the 
 dying, by means of a process, most fearful and strange. The chapters on 
 "The winged Globe," " The Flight," and "The Pre-existence and Transmi- 
 gration of Souls," are each in itself worth the price of the book. When it 
 was announced that this work was about to be published, the advanced demand 
 called for an extra edition of 3,000 copies; and still the orders come. 
 Price, $2.00. Postage free. 
 
16 
 
 SYNOPSIS. 
 
 A dying woman makes a promise that, if possible, she will come back after 
 death, and reveal the mysteries of the land beyond the grave. She keeps her 
 promise. The second part of the work relates the experiences of a man, who, 
 for a time, was completely disenthralled of his body. An interesting phe- 
 nomenon. Two souls in one body. How dead people live, and where! 
 The Blending ! How a living person thinks a dead one's thoughts ! In- 
 visible beings, with human characteristics, who never lived on earth! The 
 mysterious prophecy of a disembodied soul. What the dead lady discovered 
 in regard to sound, soul, and spirit, after death. A curious thing regarding 
 light and darkness. She discerns two phantoms from behind a mystic veil. 
 Difficulty of going between the three worlds ! Souls existent from all past 
 time. Pre-existence. " The souls were clothed in garments. Do they feel 
 the weight of years? " Three grand discoveries. The dead lady experiences 
 difficulty in getting out of the door; a terrible alternative ; " I must wait till 
 the house decays ! " Another grand discovery — a universe within a room. 
 The Vastitude ! An important discovery — hills, lakes, valleys, and rivers in 
 the soul. Death, life. Something nobler than intellect. Difference between 
 the spirit-land and the soul-world. Her strange sense joys. Something 
 worth knowing by all who expect to die. The dead lady's organs; "her 
 hands are blue and wrinkled, her cheeks are pale and haggard." She falls 
 into a singular state. Her passage from the spirit-land to the soul-world. 
 Finds herself in a new realm ; a miracle. The law of images. How the 
 future is read. What material a disembodied soul's clothing is made o£ 
 Where the dead lady was : a new universe. What animals really are. Con- 
 cerning the origin of the human soul. Its pre-existence. Why beasts are, 
 and are not, at the same time, immortal. 
 
 The Story of a Soul before it occupied the Human Form! 
 Where it originated; how it started out upon its journey. The Bath of Fire. 
 The burial ; the rock ; the earthquake. The chain from moss to man. Why 
 gorillas and apes resemble men ; why the latter are immortal and the former 
 not. The transmigration of Souls. The Soul-Republic. A mystery. 
 Heaven and hell ; their nature. The dead lady describes her dress and her 
 person. The meaning of the word love. Do phantoms grow ? A singular 
 law governing the dead. The harlot in the Phantorama. What befalls those 
 who never become wives and mothers. The dreadful sentence : " To be 
 alone ! " The child and its mother, and what befalls many a dead father ; a 
 thing well worth studying. Why spiritual mediums are lonely and unhappy ! 
 Something that is neither mind, matter, nor spirit. The material whereof 
 thoughts are made. How a woman can always tell whether she is loved 
 truly or not, whether the lover be dead or alive. Organization and destiny. 
 Valuable — especially to sensitives. How they become mediums — are be- 
 set by people of the mid regions of space — and what comes of it. The con- 
 sequences of making compacts with the unholy dead. Mediums and their 
 friends. Ethereal asps, toads, serpents. Why mediums blow hot and cold 
 in the same breath. Comparative value of diverse methods of dealing with 
 the dead. Will the loving living ever meet the loved dead? Yes! no! why? 
 the answer. Why children of the same parents are not always brother and 
 sister. A mystery and its solution. How the loving dead can elevate the 
 loved living. Man and the iceberg. How hell loses its inhabitants, and 
 whither they go. A thornless route to the Soul-worlds. The philosophers 
 on the corner. The picture and the voice ; what it said. What is inside of 
 every tree and flower. How deformed people look when fairly dead. Shoot- 
 ing a soul. The archway to the Soul-world; she passes through it; a fete in 
 heaven. Cottages, palaces, graves, flowers, birds, and animals in the Soul- 
 world; musical trees. She discourses about " eternal affinities," and dissects 
 that doctrine. Marriage here and there. Why love is often here a one- 
 sided affair. Her own laye and lover ; the meeting of the spheres, and the 
 
17 
 
 strange thrills that danced through her being. She crosses the threshold of a 
 third universe. Curious analogies. A man creates a world. A beautifu? 
 law; a mystery, and its explanation; a sublime view, and a new one, of 
 Deity, and His attributes. She declares that " the material universe, with 
 all its countless starry systems, is, after all, but a little island, which, like an 
 eggshell on a lake, floats upon the crest of a single wavelet of this infinite 
 sea of Spirit." Soul weaving. The loom and the fabric. Spiritual locomo- 
 tives, and how they are built. Society in the Star-land. Mahomet ; how 
 each Islamite is blessed with seventy thousand wives, and where the ladies 
 come from; very curious, and true. Sex, and its uses on earth; a curious 
 revelation. "Up amongst the dead folks." How a man on earth may really 
 be a woman there, and vice versa. Singular divorces in the Soul-world. A 
 penny's worth of wit ; a dollar's worth of common sense. A sure test by 
 which any woman can tell whether what is offered her be love or its counter- 
 feit. How those who fancy there is no hell hereafter will find themselves mis- 
 taken ; something hotter than fire and brimstone. She desires to look into 
 Gehenna, and her wish is gratified. She gazes into the Gulf of Horrors. 
 The crown of snakes. Lakes of burning fire, and hundreds of souls therein. 
 The constituents of the flames. Atheists, drunkards, gamblers. Do souls 
 exist eternally, or are they finally absorbed into Deity ? The answer. Are 
 idiots immortal? The reply. Monsters, one only of whose parents are 
 human; are they immortal? The response. Malformed monsters, both of 
 whose parents are human ; are they immortal? The answer. A woman may 
 bear a human body without a soul. How ? The conditions essential to im- 
 mortality. What becomes of a wasted soul germ t Are abortions immortal ? 
 Answer: "Some." "When, which? How are we to tell when? The reply. 
 Why some disembodied souls are compelled to dwell near earth. Sometimes 
 a child is born with two heads, or two bodies ; are there two souls also ? The 
 answer. Can a virgin bear a child ? Yes. Explanation. Are children born 
 — do the sexes cohabit in the soul-worlds ? The answer. Extraordinary 
 statement concerning the results of spiritual intercourse. The hierarchy of 
 the skies; the ascending orders of disembodied beings, and their rank and 
 names. The dead lady declares space to be bounded, and tells what the 
 Nebulae is. Man's final destiny. The omniscient faculty of man. Two hours 
 in the Soul-world. Climbing up the sky. 
 
 Part Second. 
 
 The thrilling experience of a soul disenthralled for a time from the tram- 
 mels of the body. There can be not the shadow of a doubt but that the 
 one hundred and twenty pages comprising the conclusion of this book con- 
 tains more information on the subject of the soul — its looks, nature, habits, 
 moods, powers, phases, capacities, location, origin, destiny, and characteris- 
 tics — than any work ever before issued from the press of this or any other 
 country. State of the dead ; their powers and methods of return. The dream 
 state, spiritual state, and "Hashish" state compared. How a person feels 
 when dying. The disenthrallment. Invisible men. The exact seat of the 
 human soul. 
 
 The Winged Globe. Pre-existence of the Human Soul. 
 
 The difference between spirit, soul, and matter. How a man's spirit looks ; 
 its color. Description of an actual, veritable human soul. Its size. The 
 process of thinking described. The lone student. The silent language. 
 The man meets, and is instructed by a dead Egyptian. "Where the soul goes, 
 and what it does when a person is asleep, both sound and when dreaming. 
 Souls get tired; their curious way of resting. The soul will one day have no 
 body at all; will be bodiless. The " Under God." Difference between males 
 and men, females and women. He ascends ; the two souls get caught in a 
 thunder-storm. Do spirits get wet ? Are they affected by wind, rain, fire, 
 
18 
 
 cold, water? The question solved. The fierce lightnings play around them; 
 the horror. Can a hurricane blow away a spirit ? The reply. The Egyptian 
 speaks to him. An eloquent description of a tempest in the air. The repub- 
 lic of souls. The shapes of various thoughts — very singular. The starry 
 alphabet, and its letters. The Egyptian puts a tremendous question, which he 
 attempts to answer. Nature. The Rosicrucians. Personality of Deity. 
 He is still creating worlds ; and of what these worlds are made. He hears 
 a wondrous music-voice in the air. The extraordinary tilings it spoke. A 
 glorious sentence as ever was written. He sees the speaker — a magnificent 
 woman, and wonders if her husband does not come to deep grief on her ac- 
 count. Jealousy ; the lady talks about love. A masterly analysis of the 
 constituents of heaven, and of the human soul. A splendid definition. The 
 fread soul fears he shall fall down and be dashed to nonenity. "All things 
 liga v er than air must ascend." A spirit is lighter than air ; how, therefore, 
 can it descend through air, which is denser than itself? A series of very 
 frequent questions concerning the "physique" of the soul are answered.. 
 What a human spiritual body is made of. Can a flame be iioaked in water ?/ 
 The magnetic sun and electric moon, in the human body — very singular ; 
 something for the philosophers. A soul passes through a cold three thousand 
 degrees below zero, without being affected. Its fire-proof nature. Why 
 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not get burned up. Definition of a 
 Monad. How the soul gets into the body prior to birth. The process 
 described. Size, color, and shape of a soul-germ. Ghosts — real ghosts — . 
 graveyard ones. Their natrre. How to catch the spiritual body of a plant 
 or flower. A startling assertion : the oak, acorn, and man. Dreams and 
 dreaming. Visions. Where the soul goes, and what it does when we sleep. 
 If dogs dream, have they therefore souls? Reply. Do souls eat and drink? 
 The answer. The disenthralled one returns to his body. The slumber; 
 the awakening. How long it takes a soul to go from one state to the other ; 
 and the number of these states. Children begotten and born in the spirit- 
 world; their nature. Man, like God, had no beginning. The soul's form. 
 Do dead infants have spiritual bodies? Reply. How and when every man's 
 soul leaves his body without Ins knowing it. How a man can be seen in two 
 places at the same time. Are there demons ? Answer: two kinds. Expla- 
 nation. The " Commune Spirit," — a fearful truth — and its statement. 
 Common Sense versus Public Opinion. Adultery. Murder. Conscience. 
 Remorse. The choking. 
 
 Part III. Thought. 
 
 Necessity of Antagonism. The Baptism of Fire. "Sneers." The old and 
 the new. The Soul greater than Laws. Truth to Self. The True Prayer 
 and Creed. Final results unknown. Soul moods. Matter a form of Life 
 — Death a misnomer. The Source of Life. True Liberty. Definition of 
 Deity. The Egyptian and the Jew. Comets; what they really are. A 
 Latter-day Sermon, and what it was. The Path!! A Latter-day Sermon; 
 Text: Hearts! — a Journey through Hell, and what I saw there; very re- 
 markable ! The voice of the Inner Me. Tim Jenkins' Soul, and what came 
 of it. Approximate Gods. St. Trueman's journey through Damphulania. 
 The Phantom Gambler ! a thrilling occurrence. Pre-existence. Men in exist- 
 ence twenty billion years old. A new Definition of the Supreme. 
 
 This extraordinary book contains the celebrated Recantation Sekmon of 
 Randolph, preached in Clinton Hall, N. Y., in 1858; and concludes with the 
 still more extraordinary Asiatic Mystery ; being the secret belief and creed 
 of the Chief of the Rosicrucians. 
 
19 
 
 IX. 
 
 DREAMS AND THEIR MEANING. Over 3,000 solutions of dreams col- 
 lected from all languages ; the largest list of the kind in the world. Price, 
 50 cents. 
 The more you know this book, the better you will like it — particularly 
 
 young people ; for by observing the note on page 6, a world of surprises are 
 
 sure to follow, — and never twice the same. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE ROSICRUCIAN SYMPH; ok, PREDICTIVE CHART OF THE 
 COMING DAYS OF ANY GIVEN HUMAN BEING. $1.00. Post free. 
 
 XI. 
 
 All persons who have read any of these works, " Dealings with the Dead," 
 "Love, and its Hidden History," "The master Passion," "Seership; or, 
 the Magnetic Mirror," "After Death; or, the Disembodiment of Man," 
 "Pre- Adamite Man," " Ravalette," " The Rosicrucian's Story," especially, 
 may have wondered at the Strange Machinery, and Persona? of those 
 two works, and the sources of power hinted at in all the others, and have 
 vainly tried to unravel the mystery. To all such we say that the Rosicrucians 
 and their very extraordinary system is no myth, albeit in two of those books 
 many things are veiled, and symbolize deeper meanings. We now desire to 
 call attention to 
 
 THE ASIATIC MYSTERY. 
 
 The Fire-Faith ! The Religion of Flame ! The Force of Love ! 
 The Energos of will! The Formative Force of Fire and Matter ! 
 The Oneness of Soul, and God, and the Flame force of the Universe! 
 The Magic of Polar Mentality ! The Location of Soul within the 
 Human Body, 
 
 and to the Grand Secret of redeeming from domestic wretchedness the 
 millions of suffering wives and (husbands too), by the exercise of three 
 simple, natural forces of the human being, as set forth in the " first Rosi- 
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 xn. 
 
 The celebrated and world-renowned 
 
 RIDDLE OF HERMES! 
 
 For the solution of which, — the real answer being known but to three living 
 sworn persons, — this house offers a heavy reward in gold coin. Price 
 of Riddle and conditions, 25 cents and 1 stamp. 
 
Announcement. 
 
 AN EXTRAORDINARY AND THRILLING WORK, Bt the samb 
 
 RARELY GIFTED AUTHOR, IS NOW BEING PREPARED FOR PRESS AND WILL 
 BE READY IN MARCH, 1872, ENTITLED 
 
 DHOULA BEL: 
 
 The Magic Globe; A Romance of the Shadow and the Light. 
 
 i 
 A most intensely interesting volume, and all the more so in that it is mainly 
 autobiographical, and tells more of Mr. Randolph's inner history, and 
 displays more phases of his genius than any other single work of his yet 
 issued. 
 
 SYNOPSIS.— Book I. 
 
 The Book and its characters — a forecast of marvels. New York in 1827. 
 Dutch Phlegm and English Blood. City Fathers. No. 70 Canal street. 
 The House and its Tenant. The Spell — the Magic Glance. A Persian on 
 th^ " EvilEye." Curious. Lefebre on Ghosts. How a man feels about being 
 hung. The Mysterious Stranger. The Storm of '27, and what came of it. 
 What it is to be! The Manuscript — the other side of Time. Extraordi- 
 nary narrative of Dhoula Bel. About the Milky Way. Good and Evil. The 
 
 Secret that commands success. What the Veiled One said. Curious. 
 
 The Mysterious Interruption. The Stormy Revel. " Worse than Crime." 
 " She was Stopped by the Gate of a Bridge." " I am ready, Lord." The flight 
 
 of the Cross. Thrilling event in Flora's room ! The Eye of Flame ! 
 
 Dhoula Bel, — his tripod and Magic Globe — Wonderful. Prophecy, Temp- 
 tation and Promise. Discovery. The Dialogue. The three Invisibles. 
 
 Why Cain Fell ! Flora's Narrative. The Past. The tufted footfall and the 
 
 Phantom child. The.Star Uralmia — its office — the Mystic Sleep of Sialam. 
 Gods and Devils. Fate of Genius. Intellect. She yields. Dhoula Bel tri- 
 umphs. The Early Days. Newport, R. I. How to make a Pedigree. 
 
 The Phantom Shallop and its oarsman. A Philosopher on " Marriage." " I've 
 
 played the game of life twice over." The Warning Voice. — " The man's 
 
 invisible ! " Superstition and a Sunset Scene. Doubts. Experience vs. 
 Enthusiasm. The Caterpillar's Dream — the Butterfly's Bridal — Swallows 
 
 vs. Esthetics The Old Stone Mill at Newport, tremendous occurrences 
 
 thereat. A strangely weird adventure. The descent into Hell. The radiant 
 zones of the abyss. How Art flourishes down below. Its King. Strange 
 Marvels. — A Change. Council of the Hours. A power behind the Throne. 
 The Mystic Arch. Dreaming, and Moral Epidemics. A tear and two baskets 
 of fruit. Diablerie, The warning voice. The hand of Iron. The fright 
 
 Two hours in the Mill. A Castle lighter than Air — Its mysteries. The 
 
 Phantom's Song. Seng of the eight Mystic Gates. The Mystic Sleep. 
 A Rose-Cross Doctrine. The Scroll. The Veil. The Ghostly Child. Sec- 
 ond Sight. The Willow Song. The Phantascope. The Youth. Story 
 of a life in ten lines. . . . The Congress in the Sky. The Rival Powers. 
 Logic infernal, yet true. The Swoon. Surprise. The Transmutation of 
 Metals. The Mysterious one. The Red Gnome's Chaunt. Spectra. 
 
 20 
 
21 
 
 Strange truths. Super-mor!al Power. Anthropology. A new theory. A 
 magnificent revelation concerning Souls. — Solution of a mighty problem. 
 Germs and Gems of thought for future thinkers. Origin of the first man — 
 
 The process — The Humaka. Extraordinary display of Magic — The 
 
 Koran — The Rings — Free Will : very strange. The Battle of Life. The 
 River-Passage, and the Bridge. The example and the triumph. The fate 
 
 of Genius. The temptation and death. The descent into Hell. "Mene 
 
 Tekel." The Ghostly Boat. The Gorgeous Vision. Description of Death ; 
 how it is swallowed up in Victory. Strange talk from a Devil. A dark 
 
 thing cleared up The Son. The ascent through the Poles. 
 
 Disappearance of the Wizard. Five years after. Mother and Child. The 
 only possibility of escape. The Power of circumstance. Lapse of years. 
 
 Change of fortune. The Gamblers The Mystic Drama. A 
 
 terrific adventure. A trip into Cuba. A noon-tide sleep and its conse- J 
 quences. How did he get there? The Hermit. Who was he? Mysterj 
 Thickens. Singular lapse of time. The Juggler, Hermit, and Dhoula Bel 
 
 are one. Ambition's Birth. Triumph of the Tempter The 
 
 Magic Globe. The Chaunt, the Scroll, the Invocation. The Lost Moment. 
 A Mystery not solvable without the key. A series of marvellous transac- 
 tions. Africa. The Phantasm — very singular. The clipper and the 
 
 Brig of War — the chase. The beautiful quadroon — the grotto — its roof — 
 " I will," cause, effect, agencies. Immortality. Love. The Siren. Hope. 
 
 It was not all a dream. Cuba. England. The awakening. A Soul looks 
 
 forth. The two gifts of jewels ! The Rosicrucians. Their Mission. " What 
 may be." Shadow. Light. The double apparition. Baffled. Malediction. 
 Back to Cuba. More mystery. The sailor lad. Three years after — by the 
 editor. Duello Extraordinaire ! Announcement of the drama. 
 
 Book II. The Drama. — Change of characters. The butcher of the Rue- 
 du cherche-midi — Paris — A canine convention. Association of ideas — French ! 
 General Blum. Total depravity. Instances. Retaliations. Cleparsse and 
 Ms foes. Blum's tongue runs too fast, but proves him a philosopher. Ex- 
 traordinary persons and events. Who's who ? Gonnel's grief. Commotion 
 among the " ton." Maurice the hunchback. The dream and its interpreter. 
 Le Moniteur. " To the rescue." Concerning sheep. Blum's Fable. Jus- 
 tice, the bees, Nature and the bear. Hatred begets itself. The bottle of 
 cuMets. Ponto the dog. Boiled Beef vs. Raw Mutton. In trait vast. Airy 
 vo«ces. Day-ghosts. Little Winnie. The combat. Tetanus — a cure for. 
 
 Tl>e schemers and the scheme. The sacred sheep. The wager. The 
 
 question. Result. Maurice and the gypsy girl. Paris et ses environs. La 
 Plaissance. A girl's thoughts. " And the voice said, ' Move on.' " Eaves- 
 dropping. Plot thickens. Childhood's sleep. Alaric. Sympathy. 
 
 Antipathy. Mystery. A Paradox. The ragged Philosophers. Tout-le 
 Noir's wife. His apostrophe to the Devil. Vendetta. " Amen, Selah ! 
 Selah, Amen ! " — The Spaniard. " A pint's a pound the world around." 
 Conspiracy. The dark gentleman. Babbling. Where it led a fast young 
 
 man. Counterfeit coin. The Chateau Blanc. Extraordinary adventure. 
 
 Discovery, a ruse, escape. — Result No. 1. Menilmontant. The Mossy 
 
 stone. The frightful spectre of the Mill. The eyeless ghost. More mutton 
 
 mystery. The Robbery. Rogues Surprised. Gustaye Gautier, and 
 
 Baupry the Barber — thrilling. Alaric's false vengeance. Windfalls. 
 Tenipus is fugiting. Lottery — the Prize. The belt of gold. The Barber 
 chair. Agitation! Agitating!! The Master stroke. Baudry's Philoso- 
 phy. Caius Curtius and the Sabine Queen. The picture on the wall. Pan- 
 egyric on Benedict Arnold. Terrific scene. The Red Bath — Le Marche 
 du Temple. Mons. Jasper. Bisnet and the Dentist. Aline. The Bur- 
 glary. Mince Pies. The two masks. What happened. " The dying 
 
 part of death's what troubles me." Repentance too late. Twenty pounds 
 of mutton, and Ponto the dog. "No. 27 Passage de Valois, Palaise Royale." 
 Passports. Axles. Eire Fiends' revel. Baron- Admiral Vogemoff" pro- 
 
22 
 
 * 
 
 poses to eat no chops, but tell a tale. The preconcerted signal. Inquest. 
 "Witnesses. Revelry by night. The Admiral's Thrilling Story. Storm 
 at Sea — wreck. The Fever Dream — startling. Woman. Sacred Mat- 
 ters vs. Grampus Steaks. Ground sharks. An Encounter. Head Soup. 
 The Banquet of Horror. "The Man in red on the Pont des Arts. — The bot- 
 tle of cutlets. Arrest. Listening — Chemistry rare. Baron's capital idea. A 
 cold meat with hot adjuncts. The trial. Baudry's despair. Winnie turns 
 
 fool. Curious French Law-facts. Three good people turn Vandals. 
 
 " They wept beneath the willow." Prison of La Roquette. What all who 
 ever saw the writer well know. The Dungeon. Prisons, prisoners and sen- 
 tences. To Legislators. What hearts were made for. An attack on, 
 
 and defence of, the Devil. Cleparsse's adventures. Thrilling ones. 
 
 Story of the Turk, Hijji Moolik and Mohammed. Moolik changed to 
 a woman. Living a hundred years in thirty seconds. Total de- 
 pravity — Judgment day. The Sheik-al Islam and his beautiful niece. A 
 love tale. We pity Cleparsse. Love — a cannibal's definition. Trance 
 — Doom — chaunt — the accuser. Rights of Man. Triumphant end of 
 judgment vision. Passion. Weakness. Ingratitude. Gold. Cle- 
 parsse on the Negro race. New ideas. Sangs- Melees. The Negress 
 
 betrays Antoine. Ambush. The fight. The drama becomes thrill- 
 
 ingly acmetical. Escape to Caboul. Persia, Teheran. The red-garbed 
 astrologer. " And what, '\ I gasped, " was this man's name? " 
 "Man," replied he, " I tell you it was no man, i< was the Devil!" Dhoula 
 Bel and the Butcher. Astounding exhibition. The Devil a perfect gentle- 
 man. Only chance. A tale of Love. The Angel and the fiend. Dhoula 
 
 raises the dead. Contest. Crime vs. Sorcery. The trial by Magic. Excite- 
 ment. Strange accusation. The skin of a black cat. The cavern and the 
 beam. The Mollah loses his head. The tomb of Solyman. Plato and 
 
 Crito. Rosicrucia. Magnificent Speech — and possibility. Temptation. 
 
 Agrippa. The Devil and the Black Dog. Black and Evil, proved white and 
 
 good. Logic, by a master. Two roads. Philosophical. Practical. 
 
 Startling. New Theory of the tides. True. What will frighten you, — per- 
 haps. End of Modern Logic. Dhoula Bel on Manias. Profundities. The 
 Elixir of Life. Astounding revelation and offer. The " Double." The 
 Fire lines — and warning. 
 
 The Quarrel and Threat. Bel proves Bullet-proof. The Sultan's Dream. 
 
 " By Allah, he has no shadow !" Fearful visitation at La Roquette. Yet 
 
 more thrilling. Is Conscience an innate principle? Singular adventure in 
 Burlington. "Guilty!" Madness. The leap into the river of flame! 
 Esthetics of a Cannibal. Alexis Baudry vs. Eugene Aram. What almost 
 
 challenges belief. Baudry's swoon — its unearthly cause. Curious ! 
 
 Fascination of Terror. The Mission of Mystery. A strange experiment with 
 a Ghost. The translucent spectre of Capt. Harris. The slumber. The Enig- 
 ma. Sarcasm. Thinking. Modern Eolism. Dhoula Bel on Genius. Por- 
 trait of the World's Queen. " The Worms ! the Worms ! " Thou shalt not 
 surely Die !" said Dhoula Bel.— — Thaumaturgy. — The sphere — Cologne, 1486. 
 "What a pity!" The Devil delights in Chess!" Tribute to a "Negro" 
 of Marshall, Michigan. Strange talk from a demon's lips. The Gnome. — 
 The Phantorama. The Caravan. The Attack. Night. Morning. The 
 avant courier. The footprints of God in his wrath. A gorgeous scene on 
 Zahara. The Typhoon's breath. "Remember the Oasis of Chelgar-Nu- 
 jek !" Fatmore the Pussy. In the Sultan's Harem ! Stamboul. Another 
 " Woman." The Vizier proves to be a scholar. Fatmore goes to heaven. 
 The magic globe revolves. Trouble in Cathay. Its cause and effects. The 
 globe reveals American State Secrets. An Imperial Doctor. The original 
 Rosicrucian. The loves of Arzeezal and Ulalla, The Chinar Leaf. The 
 famous oriental absorption idea! Events condense, crises approach, blood 
 tingles, hearts beat, hair rises, cheeks grow pale. Dhoula visits the Ministry 
 of Justice — works certain wires and astounds the Minister who learns* 
 
23 
 
 singular lesson. Death-penalty. Strange Conceit. Attraction extraordinary. 
 
 How to execute a malefactor! The Guillotine. 8 o'clock. Preparations. 
 
 8^, Baudry leaps the scaffold. Excitement, 8J. The Human Hunt. The 
 Boy. 8.40, The explosion. 8.45, Eobert coupe le tete. 8.50, Cleparsse 
 makes a wager. A terrible huntsman joins the chase. The halt before the 
 tomb. 9 o'clock. The capture. Baudry's Execution. Cleparsse wins. The 
 Baron gets in trouble. The Minister " finds an excuse," and Cleparsse escapes 
 to Brest. A new and startling light is thrown on Dhoula Bel. 
 
 Chapter Last. Close of the Drama. Maurice becomes a Count of 
 Romagna. Marriage. Discoveries ! Alaric. " Remember the Oasis of 
 Chelgar Nujek. 
 
 Supplementary Chapter. "Editorial." — About the Rosicrucians. Let- 
 ter of a skeptical Briton concerning the author , and all sorts of magic he 
 derides. The author's letter to a friend. The Sequel. "The Wonderful 
 6tory of Ravalette."* Einis. t 
 
 * Ravalette solves the Dhoula Bel mystery. See advertisement in this 
 list. The price of Dhoula Bel will be $2.25, postpaid to any address, direct 
 from the Randolph Publishing Co., Boston, Mass., only. 
 
 Notice. — Persons ordering an entire set of those works by express, for 
 Clubs or otherwise, may reserve 25 per cent, and send balance with the order. 
 
 Agents. — Ladies or gentlemen, who wish to canvass for these works, will 
 be supplied in cash bills of $100 or over, at 40 per cent. off. Being same 
 terms offered the Book Trade. Registered Letters, Drafts, Postal Orders 
 should be made payable to the 
 
 RANDOLPH PUBLISHING CO., 
 89 Court St. P. O. Box 3352, 
 BOSTON, MASS.