Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/141

 failings of temper, intensified by concentration, so that every fault of our own finds itself multiplied by reflection, like our images in a saloon lined with mirrors, and we are yet to learn that the heavens are a point from the pen of God's perfection ; the world is a bud from the bower of his beauty; the sun is a spark from the light of his wisdom, and the sky is a bubble on the sea of his power. His beauty is free from the spot of sin, hidden in the thick vale of darkness; he made mirrors from the atoms of the world, and threw a reflection from his face on every atom.

Place woman among flowers, foster her as a tender plant, and she is a thing of fancy, waywardness, and sometimes folly, —annoyed by a dewdrop, fretted by the touch of a butterfly's wing and ready to faint at the rustle of a beetle; the zephyrs are too rough, the showers too heavy, and she is overpowered by the perfume of a rosebud. But let real calamity come, rouse her affections, enkindle the fires of her heart, and mark her then; how her heart strengthens itself, how strong is her purpose! Place her in the heat of battle — give her a child, a bird, anything she loves or pities, to protect — and see her in a relative instance, raising her white arms as a shield, as her own blood crimsons her upturned forehead, praying for life to protect the helpless.

Transplant her in dark places of the earth, awaken her energies to action, and her breath becomes a healing, her presence a blessing. She disputes, inch by inch, the stride of the stalking pestilence, when man, the strong and brave, shrinks away pale and affrighted. Misfortune haunts her not; she wears away a life of silent endurance, and goes forward with less timidity than to her bridal. In prosperity she is a bud full of odors, waiting but for the winds of adversity to scatter them abroad, — pure gold, valuable, but untried in the furnace. In short, woman is a miracle, a mystery, the centre from which radiates the great charm of existence.

All I have said of physical love has been uttered from the fulness of an honest heart, believing what I say.

Let us open up another page of this love-volume, and demonstrate its substantiality, its absolute physical nature. It is proved to be material, for reasons I have already stated; and, 1, in the third list of reasons : Because no men or women were ever yet jealous because their legal partner loved some one else with a