Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/122

 impression and chemical state of her body can never afterward be wholly changed. This is seen in the case of widows, whose babes frequently resemble the first husband far more than they do their own fathers. Really, marriage is a chemical fusion in all cases, but not always magnetic or spiritual; hence, any woman who steps aside from her duty to her own husband, becomes charged with a foreign chemistry and magnetism that she can never get wholly rid of on earth; and the love she bore her husband grows weaker from that moment, until it is wholly lost. Now, if a man allows himself to accept another woman's chemistry, his innate love for his wife is sapped, coldness and carelessness are sure to follow, and just in proportion as he mingles himself with many, is his total inability to love even one truly ! This truth, fresh from God, cannot be too strongly impressed upon the human mind. Beware of the first false step! the first temptation, and do not imperil a whole life of promise for a five minutes' dearly bought pleasure. In true marriage the couple grow more and more like each other, and by marriage I do not mean a mere formal ceremony, but a union of souls, and wherever that exists the marriage is complete, with or without a ceremony, albeit, I deem it always proper to conform to the moral usages of society in that respect; but where two have only that rite to bind them, God pity them ! I say, for it is often a lifelong imprisonment, productive of poison hell instead of healthy heaven.

In the case of women, the great majority of American wives, — and my opportunities of knowing have been good, for my medical practice during twenty-seven years has been very extensive, and thousands of cases have come to my knowledge, — it is very rarely that they ever experience either the full measure of conjugal bliss, to which as wives they are entitled, or anything else than anguish, unutterable and loathly, or supreme indifference, both of which are fatal to wedded love. This may result from different causes, the effect of personal vice while at school, resulting in changing the seat of nervous power. Hence very few of them really know, from experience, what marriage really means. Very frequently wives' disappointments, ay, in the majority of instances, result I repeat, from the morbidness of the husband(?), the result of youthful precocity and vice on his part, long years before. The fruit of such a marriage is bitterness indeed. He is no — no