Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/158

 years ago is one thing; what I know of my mental career and power and processes to-day is quite another. I have ceased to be a believer in automatonism and cling to common sense. Let this be my final answer to all who say I am indebted to spirits for my thoughts; they are mistaken, or purposely fabricate the tale to detract from me and bolster up a clique, — as a great percentage of spiritualists are, in my opinion, after twenty-five years' experience; and so far as such fellows as the "Davenport Brothers" are concerned, I am just as sure that they are frauds, so far as their "manifestations" are concerned, as I am that God rules the universe. I am a Rosicrucian, and as such, of course, believe in spirits to some extent; but I .am under no known obligation to them for a single word, book, or line that I have written, and my reply to the question propounded above is: It is because I am a solitary one, and have carefully cultivated the onlook of life, wholly, entirely abiding in a bottomless, topless, sideless sphere! I look where I wist, and know for the seeking! Were it not so, the thousands would not have blessed my pen as they do, nor would my well-wishers outnumber those who hate, because they know me not, ten thousand to one. That is why. But I learned some of my severest and best lessons of the riff-raff of the world, and I have found sterling virtue in the lowest haunts I dared — police-protected — pay a visit to ; and I have seen crime festering, clothed in satin, and glittering in costly jewelry. The sum-total is, man and woman are, generally, everywhere the same. All either wants is love, and the rich as well as the poor are daily pining for what neither lust, wealth, beauty, or position can possibly give, — love, sirs, or ladies; love, right straight from the heart! . . When people begin to love in earnest, the world is safe, and human redemption secured. . . Continued patience is the strongest test of love. . . A woman that loves is incapable of foeticide!. . A man that loves his wife is incapable of either drunkenness, debauchery, or deserting his home. . . A loving couple are incapable of propagating idiots or viciousness; for if love presides over the marriage bed, God will see to it that the fruit is neither misshaped nor unsound. . . The love cure is the best of all cures, for it is magnetic. Every woman has the power of commanding love, if she only goes to work the right