Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/137

 shall probably grow deeply attached to my mate as the years roll by, and feel that my existence is indissolubly bound up with his, for better for worse, both on this side of the grave and beyond. Even without any progeny to cement the bond, such a feeling of union and such joint hopes of immortality between husband and wife are, happily, not uncommon. Well, but now, according to your theories, Lesbie, it seems there is to be no Beyond for my father or my husband! Or rather, the Beyond will change their sex, and in so doing, will change their identity! To show how thoroughly it will do so, suppose my future husband to be a gigantic bearded man with a deep bass voice. When, in the future life, he is transfigured into a woman, will he keep the same bass voice or one like it, his person being changed into that of a gigantic female beauty? I grant you, the effect of such a metamorphosis would be grand, but would it not give a sad wrench to my tender thoughts of ‘auld lang syne?’ Do we not—those of us who are true-hearted—bestow more sterling love on our old decrepit pets than on the most attractive newcomers? If your own fine bull pup Goss were to live to be an old infirm dog, would you part with him to the first sausage-man who might come round, in order to make way for a new fancy? No, Lesbie, I am very sure you would not. And yet you calmly tell womankind that we must prepare to do with our husbands and fathers what you would not consent to do with your dog,—discard them hereafter in favour of more attractive personalities! This can hardly be accurate.

‘Believe me, I detest the loathsome idolatry upheld by the dollymopses, weaker vessels, or whatever you call them, who look upon wedlock as the end and aim of woman’s existence. I hold with you that to worship any men or man whatever, setting them up in our place, is the very