that sooner or later will destroy all happiness, unless the couple are reasonably well mated.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOME LOVING HEARTS ARE HAPPIEST.]
4. MORE FATAL THE OFTENER THEY OCCUR.--As O.S. Fowler says: ""The poison of asps is under their lips." The first spat is like a deep gash cut into a beautiful face, rendering it ghastly, and leaving a fearful scar, which neither time nor cosmetics can ever efface; including that pain so fatal to love, and blotting that sacred love-page with memory"s most hideous and imperishable visages. Cannot many now unhappy remember them as the beginning of that alienation which embittered your subsequent affectional cup, spoiled your lives?
With what inherent repulsion do you look back upon them? Their memory is horrid, and effect on love most destructive."
5. FATAL CONDITIONS.--What are all lovers" "spats" but disappointment in its very worst form? They necessarily and always produce all its terrible consequences. The finer feelings and sensibilities will soon become destroyed and nothing but hatred will remain.
6. EXTREME SORROW.--After a serious "spat" there generally follows a period of tender sorrow, and a feeling of humiliation and submission.
Mutual promises are consequently made that such a condition of things shall never happen again, etc. But be sure and remember, that every subsequent difficulty will require stronger efforts to repair the breach. Let it be understood that these compromises are dangerous, and every new difficulty increases their fatality. Even the strongest will endure but few, nor survive many.
7. DISTRUST AND WANT OF CONFIDENCE.--Most difficulties arise from distrust or lack of confidence or common-sense. When two lovers eye each other like two curs, each watching, lest the other should gain some new advantage, then this shows a lack of common-sense, and the young couple should get sensible or separate.
8. JEALOUSY.--When one of the lovers, once so tender, now all at once so cold and hardened; once so coy and familiar now suddenly so reserved, distant, hard and austere, is always a sure case of jealousy. A jealous person is first talkative, very affectionate, and then all at once changes and becomes cold, reserved and repulsive, apparently without cause. If a person is jealous before marriage, this characteristic will be increased rather than diminished by marriage.
9. CONFESSION.--If you make up by confession, the confessor feels mean and disgraced; or if both confess and forgive, both feel humbled; since forgiveness implies inferiority and pity; from which whatever is manly and womanly shrinks. Still even this is better than continued "spats."
10. PREVENTION.--If you can get along well in your courtship you will invariably make a happy couple if you should unite your destinies in marriage. Learn not to give nor take offence. You must remember that all humanity is imperfect at best. We all have our faults, and must keep them in subordination. Those who truly love each other will have but few difficulties in their courtship or in married life.
11. REMEDIES.--Establishing a perfect love in the beginning const.i.tutes a preventive. Fear that they are not truly loved usually paves the way for "spats." Let all who make any pretension guard against all beginnings of this reversal, and strangle these "hate-spats" the moment they arise. "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath," not even an hour, but let the next sentence after they begin quench them forever. And let those who cannot court without "spats,"
stop; for those who spat before marriage must quarrel after.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON THY WRATH".]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALONE AND FORSAKEN.]
A BROKEN HEART.
1. WOUNDED LOVE.--"Tis true that love wields a magic, sovereign, absolute, and tyrannical power over both the body and the mind when it is given control. It often, in case of dissapointment, works havoc and deals death blows to its victims, and leaves many in that morbid mental condition which no life-tonics simply can restore. Wounded love may be the result of hasty and indiscreet conduct of young people; or the outgrowth of l.u.s.t, or the result of domestic infidelity and discord.
2. FATAL EFFECTS.--Our cemeteries receive within the cold shadows of the grave thousands and thousands of victims that annually die from the results of "broken hearts." It is no doubt a fact that love troubles cause more disorders of the heart than everything else combined.
3. DISRUPTED LOVE.--It has long been known that dogs, birds, and even horses, when separated from their companions or friends, have pined away and died; so it is not strange that man with his higher intuitive ideas of affection should suffer from love when suddenly disrupted.
4. CRUCIFYING LOVE.--Painful love feelings strike right to the heart, and the breaking up of love that cannot be consummated in marriage is sometimes allowed to crucify the affections. There is no doubt that the suffering from disappointed love is often deeper and more intense than meeting death itself.
5. HEALING.--The paralyzing and agonizing consequences of ruptured love can only be remedied by diversion and society. Bring the mind into a state of patriotic independence with a full determination to blot out the past. Those who cannot bring into subordination the pangs of disappointment in love are not strong characters, and invariably will suffer disappointments in almost every department of life.
Disappointment in love means rising above it, and conquering it, or demoralization, mental, physical and s.e.xual.
6. LOVE RUNS MAD.--Love comes unbidden. A blind ungovernable impulse seems to hold sway in the pa.s.sions of the affections. Love is blind and seems to completely subdue and conquer. It often comes like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, and when it falls it falls flat, leaving only the ruins of a tornado behind.
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 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 melancholic 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."
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, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A SURE REMEDY.]
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, 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 courtship, if courtship 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. HAWAIIAN 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]
[Ill.u.s.tration: PROPOSING.]