Part 26 (1/2)

16. RUN-AWAY MATCHES.--Many a run-away match would never have taken place but for opposition or interference. Parents are mostly to be blamed for these elopements. Their children marry partly out of spite and to be contrary. Their very natures tell them that this interference is unjust--as it really is--and this excites combativeness, firmness, and self-esteem, in combination with the social faculties, to powerful and even blind resistance--which turmoil of the faculties hastens the match. Let the affections of a daughter be once slightly enlisted in your favor, and then let the ”old folks” start an opposition, and you may feel sure of your prize. If she did not love you before, she will now, that you are persecuted. {185}

17. DISINHERITANCE.--Never disinherit, or threaten to disinherit, a child for marrying against your will. If you wish a daughter not to marry a certain man, oppose her, and she will be sure to marry him; so also in reference to a son.

18. PROPER TRAINING.--The secret is, however, all in a nutsh.e.l.l. Let the father properly train his daughter, and she will bring her first love-letter to him, and give him an opportunity to cherish a suitable affection, and to nip an improper one in the germ, before it has time to do any harm.

19. THE FATAL MISTAKES OF PARENTS.--_There is, however, one way of effectually preventing an improper match, and that is, not to allow your children to a.s.sociate with any whom you are unwilling they should marry.

How cruel as well as unjust, to allow a daughter to a.s.sociate with a young man till the affections of both are riveted, and then forbid her marrying him. Forbid all a.s.sociation or consent cheerfully to the marriage._

20. AN INTEMPERATE LOVER.--Do not flatter yourselves, young women, that you can wean even an occasional wine drinker from his cups by love and persuasion. Ardent spirit at first, kindles up the fires of love into the fierce flames at burning licentiousness, which burn out every element of love and destroy every vestige of pure affection. It over-excites the pa.s.sions, and thereby finally destroys it,--producing at first, unbridled libertinism, and then an utter barrenness of love; besides reversing the other faculties of the drinker against his own consort, and those of the wife against her drinking husband.

FIRST LOVE, DESERTION AND DIVORCE.

1. FIRST LOVE.--This is the most important direction of all. The first love experiences a tenderness, a purity and unreservedness, an exquisiteness, a devotedness, and a poetry belonging to no subsequent attachment. ”Love, like life, has no second spring.” Though a second attachment may be accompanied by high moral feeling, and to a devotedness to the object loved; yet, let love be checked or blighted in its first pure emotion, and the beauty of its spring is irrecoverably withered and lost. This does not mean the simple love of children in the first attachment they call love, but rather the mature intelligent love of those of suitable age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONSIDERING THE QUESTION.]

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2. FREE FROM TEMPTATIONS.--As long as his heart is bound up in its first bundle of love and devotedness--as long as his affections remain reciprocated and uninterrupted--so long temptations cannot take effect. His heart is callous to the charms of others, and the very idea of bestowing his affections upon another is abhorrent. Much more so is animal indulgence, which is morally impossible.

3. SECOND LOVE NOT CONSTANT.--But let this first love be broken off, and the flood-gates of pa.s.sion are raised. Temptations now flow in upon him. He casts a l.u.s.tful eye upon every pa.s.sing female, and indulges unchaste imaginations and feelings. Although his conscientiousness or intellect may prevent actual indulgence, yet temptations now take effect, and render him liable to err; whereas before they had no power to awaken improper thoughts or feelings. Thus many young men find their ruin.

4. LEGAL MARRIAGE.--What would any woman give for merely a nominal or legal husband, just to live with and provide for her, but who entertained not one spark of love for her, or whose affections were bestowed upon another? How absurd, how preposterous the doctrine that the obligations of marriage derive their sacredness from legal enactments and injunctions! How it literally profanes this holy of holies, and drags down this heaven-born inst.i.tution from its original, divine elevation, to the level of a merely human device. Who will dare to advocate the human inst.i.tution of marriage without the warm heart of a devoted and loving companion!

5. LEGISLATION.--But no human legislation can so guard this inst.i.tution but that it may be broken in spirit, though, perhaps, acceded to in form; for, it is the heart which this inst.i.tution requires. There must be true and devoted affection, or marriage is a farce and a failure.

6. THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY AND THE LAW GOVERNING MARRIAGE are for the protection of the individual, yet a man and woman may be married by law and yet unmarried in spirit. The law may tie together, and no marriage be consummated. Marriage therefore is Divine, and ”whom G.o.d hath joined together let no man put asunder.” A right marriage means a right state of the heart. A careful study of this work will be a great help to both the unmarried and the married.

7. DESERTION AND DIVORCE.--For a young man to court a young woman, and excite her love till her affections are riveted, and then (from sinister motives, such as, to marry one richer, or more handsome), to leave her, and try {188} elsewhere, is the very same crime as to divorce her from all that she holds dear on earth--to root up and pull out her imbedded affections, and to tear her from her rightful husband. First love is always constant.

The second love brings uncertainty--too often desertions before marriage and divorces after marriage.

8. THE COQUET.--The young woman to play the coquet, and sport with the sincere affections of an honest and devoted young man, is one of the highest crimes that human nature can commit. Better murder him in body too, as she does in soul and morals, and it is the result of previous disappointment, never the outcome of a sincere first love.

9. ONE MARRIAGE. One evidence that second marriages are contrary to the laws of our social nature, is the fact that almost all step-parents and step-children disagree. Now, what law has been broken, to induce this penalty? The law of marriage; and this is one of the ways in which the breach punishes itself. It is much more in accordance with our natural feelings, especially those of mothers, that children should be brought up by their own parent.

10. SECOND MARRIAGE.--Another proof of this point is, that second marriage is more a matter of business. ”I'll give you a home, if you'll take care of my children.” ”It's a bargain,” is the way most second matches are made.

There is little of the poetry of first-love, and little of the coyness and shrinking diffidence which characterize the first attachment. Still these remarks apply almost equally to a second attachment, as to second marriage.

11. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.--Let this portion be read and pondered, and also the one ent.i.tled, ”Marry your First Love if possible,”

which a.s.signs the cause, and points out the only remedy, of licentiousness.

As long as the main cause of this vice exists, and is aggravated by purse-proud, high-born, aristocratic parents and friends, and even by the virtuous and religious, just so long, and exactly in the same ratio will this blighting Sirocco blast the fairest flowers of female innocence and lovliness, and blight our n.o.blest specimens of manliness. No sin of our land is greater.

[Ill.u.s.tration]