Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/43

 of her higher, softer, diviner nature, the fool misunderstands her, and forthwith meets her with a storm of passion and its fearful exactions; wherefrom come disgust, loathing, hatred, illness, and not unfrequently incurable disease and death. These are holy seasons with woman, and whoever then desecrates the thrice holy sanctities of her nature commits a sin unpardonable; sows the winds, and by and by, if persisted in, is sure to reap the whirlwind. After all, a woman is something more and better than a machine. She is then supra-human, and is incarnating the glories of the empyreal galaxies, and ought to be treated accordingly: — tenderly, lovingly, kindly, and dearly, sweetly loved; and that, too, devoid of all passion or excitement. Impressions made upon her at that time, whether good or bad, are ineffaceable, eternal, and the wise man will understand this sublime fact, and profit accordingly. She is then like the shorn lamb, exposed to the pitiless peltings of fierce storms, whereof coarser man can have no conception. She seeks then to hide herself in the bosom of tenderness, pity, sympathy, and love; while all thought of passion or ardor is far from her pure, sweet, gentle, and trusting soul. Again: while bearing the precious freight of a new being — a priceless and immortal soul — she is subject to peculiar and strange moods, which ought to be met understandingly and with patience by the man who desires good fruit to grow upon the family tree, — either human or domestic. Dress is one of Love's vehicles. If married people paid more attention to it there would be less trouble than there is. Dress increases personal charms. Dimity and divinity go together. The woman who dresses "for company " but never for her husband, throws her treasures in the sea. As of the woman, so of the man. Trifles, I repeat, go to make up the sum of life; nor can we afford to neglect them. Love grows by attention!

Fidelity is truth to a genuine love! Love grows by knightly, courtly deference for woman, on the part of man. And he who wantonly violates her trust, or exposes her delicacy to rude shocks, is a suicidal fool, not worth a decent woman's attention! Unwelcome marital embraces are very apt to develop poison, mental, social, affectional, physical.

If one sees misery, one ought to sympathize therewith, and