Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 26

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]

{189} [Ill.u.s.tration: CUPID'S CHARM.]

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Flirting and Its Dangers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW MANY YOUNG GIRLS ARE RUINED.]

1. NO EXCUSE.--In this country there is no excuse for the young man who seeks the society of the loose and the dissolute. There is at all times and everywhere open to him a society of persons of the opposite s.e.x of his own age and of pure thoughts and lives, whose conversation will refine him and drive from his bosom ign.o.ble and impure thoughts.

2. THE DANGERS.--The young man who may take pleasure in the fact that he is the hero of half a dozen or more {191} engagements and love episodes, little realizes that such constant excitement often causes not only dangerously frequent and long-continued nocturnal emissions, but most painful affections of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. Those who show too great familiarity with the other s.e.x, who entertain lascivious thoughts, continually exciting the s.e.xual desires, always suffer a weakening of power and sometimes the actual diseases of degeneration, chronic inflammation of the gland, spermatorrhoea, impotence, and the like.--Young man, beware; your punishment for trifling with the affections of others may cost you a life of affliction.

3. REMEDY.--Do not violate the social laws. Do not trifle with the affections of your nature. Do not give others countless anguish, and also do not run the chances of injuring yourself and others for life. The society of refined and pure women is one of the strongest safeguards a young man can have, and he who seeks it will not only find satisfaction, but happiness. Simple friends.h.i.+p and kind affections for each other will enn.o.ble and benefit.

4. THE TIME FOR MARRIAGE.--When a young man's means permit him to marry, he should then look intelligently for her with whom he expects to pa.s.s the remainder of his life in perfect loyalty, and in sincerity and singleness of heart. Seek her to whom he is ready to swear to be ever true.

5. BREACH OF CONFIDENCE.--Nothing is more certain, says Dr. Naphey, to undermine domestic felicity, and sap the foundation of marital happiness, than marital infidelity. The risks of disease which a married man runs in impure intercourse are far more serious, because they not only involve himself, but his wife and his children. He should know that there is nothing which a woman will not forgive sooner than such a breach of confidence. He is exposed to the plots and is pretty certain sooner or later to fall into the snares of those atrocious parties who subsist on blackmail. And should he escape these complications, he still must lose self-respect, and carry about with him the burden of a guilty conscience and a broken vow.

6. SOCIETY RULES AND CUSTOMS.--A young man can enjoy the society of ladies without being a "flirt." He can escort ladies to parties, public places of interest, social gatherings, etc., without showing special devotion to any one special young lady. When he finds the choice of his heart, then he will be justified to manifest it, and publicly proclaim it by paying her the compliment, exclusive attention. To keep a lady's company six months is a public announcement of an engagement.

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A Word to Maidens.

1. NO YOUNG LADY who is not willing to a.s.sume the responsibility of a true wife, and be crowned with the sacred diadem of motherhood, should ever think of getting married. We have too many young ladies to-day who despise maternity, who openly vow that they will never be burdened with children, and yet enter matrimony at the first opportunity. What is the result? Let echo answer, What? Unless a young lady believes that motherhood is n.o.ble, is honorable, is divine, and she is willing to carry out that sacred function of her nature, she had a thousand times better refuse every proposal, and enter some honorable occupation and wisely die an old maid by choice.

2. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOUNG LADY, never enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until you have conversed with him freely and fully on these relations. Learn distinctly his views and feelings and expectations in regard to that purest and most enn.o.bling of all the functions of your nature, and the most sacred of all intimacies of conjugal love. Your self-respect, your beauty, your glory, your heaven, as a wife, will be more directly involved in his feelings and views and practices, in regard to that relation, than in all other things. As you would not become a weak, miserable, imbecile, unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the very prime of your life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen one, ere you commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of home. Beware of that man who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the hallowed function of maternity.

3. TALK WITH YOUR INTENDED frankly and openly. Remember, concealment and mystery in him, towards you, on all other subjects pertaining to conjugal union might be overlooked, but if he conceals his views here, rest a.s.sured it bodes no good to your purity and happiness as a wife and mother. You can have no more certain a.s.surance that you are to be victimized, your soul and body offered up, _slain_, on the altar of his sensualism, than his unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so vital to your happiness.

Unless he is willing to hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your conditions, and consecrate its pa.s.sions and its powers to the elevation and happiness of his wife and children, your maiden soul had better return to G.o.d unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal love than that you should become the wife of such a man and the mother of his children. {193}

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMAN LOVE MAKING.]

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POPPING THE QUESTION.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Uniformed Men are always Popular with the Ladies.]

1. MAKING THE DECLARATION.--There are few emergencies in business and few events in life that bring to man the trying ordeal of "proposing to a lady." We should be glad to help the bashful lover in his hours of perplexity, embarra.s.sment and hesitation, but unfortunately we cannot pop the question for him, nor give him a formula by which {195} he may do it.

Different circ.u.mstances and different surroundings compel every lover to be original in his form or mode of proposing.

2. BASHFULNESS.--If a young man is very bashful, he should write his sentiments in a clear, frank manner on a neat white sheet of note paper, enclose it in a plain white envelope and find some way to convey it to the lady's hand.