Part 23 (1/2)

7. BAD, DISMAL, AND BLUE FEELINGS.--Despondency breathes disease, and those who yield to it can neither work, eat nor sleep; they only suffer. The spell-bound, fascinated, magnetized affections seem to deaden self-control and no {160} doubt many suffering from love-sickness are totally helpless; they are beside themselves, irritational and wild. Men and women of genius, influence and education, all seem to suffer alike, but they do not yield alike to the subduing influence; some pine away and die; others rise above it, and are the stronger and better for having been afflicted.

8. RISE ABOVE IT.--Cheer up! If you cannot think pleasurably over your misfortune, forget it. You must do this or perish. Your power and influence is too much to blight by foolish and melancholicy pining. Your own sense, your self-respect, your self-love, your love for others, command you not to spoil yourself by crying over ”spilt milk.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARRIAGE ON A DEATHBED.]

9. RETRIEVE YOUR PAST LOSS.--Do sun, moon, and stars indeed rise and set in your loved one? Are there not ”as good fish in the sea as ever were caught?” and can you not catch them? Are there not other hearts on earth just as loving and lovely, and in every way as congenial? If circ.u.mstances had first turned you upon another, you would have felt about that one as now about this. Love depends far less on the party loved than on the loving one. Or is this the way either to retrieve your past loss, or provide for the future? Is it not both unwise and self-destructive; and in every way calculated to render your case, present and prospective, still more hopeless?

10. FIND SOMETHING TO DO.--Idle hands are Satan's workshop. Employ your mind; find something to do; something in which you can find self-improvement; something that will fit you better to be admired by someone else, read, and improve your mind; get into society, throw your whole soul into some new enterprise, and you will conquer with glory and come out of the fire purified and made more worthy.

11. LOVE AGAIN.--As love was the cause of your suffering, so love again will restore you, and you will love better and more consistently. Do not allow yourself to become soured and detest and shun a.s.sociation. Rebuild your dilapidated s.e.xuality by cultivating a general appreciation of the excellence, especially of the mental and moral qualities of the opposite s.e.x. Conquer your prejudices, and vow not to allow anyone to annoy or disturb your calmness.

12. LOVE FOR THE DEAD.--A most affectionate woman, who continues to love her affianced though long dead, instead of becoming soured or deadened, manifests all the richness and sweetness of the fully-developed woman thoroughly in love, along with a softened, mellow, twilight sadness which touches every heart, yet throws a peculiar l.u.s.tre and beauty over her manners and entire character. She must mourn, {161} but not forever. It is not her duty to herself or to her Creator.

13. A SURE REMEDY.--Come in contact with the other s.e.x. You are infused with your lover's magnetism, which must remain till displaced by another's.

Go to parties and picnics; be free, familiar, offhand, even forward; try your knack at fascinating another, and yield to fascinations yourself. But be honest, command respect, and make yourself attractive and worthy.

{162}

Former Customs and Peculiarities Among Men.

1. POLYGAMY.--There is a wide difference as regards the relations of the s.e.xes in different parts of the world. In some parts polygamy has prevailed from time immemorial.

Most savage people are polygamists, and the Turks, though slowly departing from the practice, still allow themselves a plurality of wives.

2. RULE REVERSED.--In Thibet the rule is reversed, and the females are provided with two or more husbands. It is said that in many instances a whole family of brothers have but one wife. The custom has at least one advantageous feature, viz.: the possibility of leaving an unprotected widow and a number of fatherless children is entirely obviated.

3. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE is a modification of polygamy. It sometimes occurs among the royalty of Europe, and is regarded as perfectly legitimate, but the morganatic wife is of lower rank than her royal husband, and her children do not inherit his rank or fortune. The Queen only is the consort of the sovereign, and ent.i.tled to share his rank.

4. DIFFERENT MANNERS OF OBTAINING WIVES.--Among the uncivilized almost any envied possession is taken by brute force or superior strength. The same is true in obtaining a wife. The strong take precedence of the weak. It is said that among the North American Indians it was the custom for men to wrestle for the choice of women. A weak man could seldom retain a wife that a strong man coveted.

The law of contest was not confined to individuals alone. Women were frequently the cause of whole tribes arraying themselves against each other in battle. The effort to excel in physical power was a great incentive to bodily development, and since the best of the men were preferred by the most superior women, the custom was a good one in this, that the race was improved.

5. THE ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN employed low cunning and heartless cruelty in obtaining his wife. Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for the coveted woman, {163} and, unawares, spring upon her. If simply disabled he carried her off as his possession, but if the blow had been hard enough to kill, he abandoned her to watch for another victim. There is here no effort to attract or please, no contest of strength; his courts.h.i.+p, if courts.h.i.+p it can be called, would compare very unfavorably with any among the brute creation.

6. THE KALMUCK TARTAR races for his bride on horseback, she having a certain start previously agreed upon. The _nuptial knot_ consists in catching her, but we are told that the result of the race all depends upon whether the girl wants to be caught or not.

7. SANDWICH ISLANDERS.--Marriage among the early natives of these islands was merely a matter of mutual inclination. There was no ceremony at all, the men and women united and separated as they felt disposed.

8. THE FEUDAL LORD, in various parts of Europe, when any of his dependents or followers married, exercised the right of a.s.suming the bridegroom's proper place in the marriage couch for the first night. Seldom was there any escape from this abominable practice. Sometimes the husband, if wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty sovereign from exercising his privilege.

9. THE SPARTANS had the custom of encouraging intercourse between their best men and women for the sake of a superior progeny, without any reference to a marriage ceremony. Records show that the ancient Roman husband has been known to invite a friend, in whom he may have admired some physical or mental trait, to share the favors of his wife, that the peculiar qualities that he admired might be repeated in the offspring.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

{164}

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Peasant Father Blessing His Daughter at Her Engagement.]