Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/76

 impotent!" And yet after all we need not be; and will not be when we all learn that God means sex to the spirit and not alone to the senses, as it is, alas, too often solely regarded by us poor, half-blind children of his mercy!

Husbands are not alone in making mistakes. Their hearts are human as well as their wives', and they equally value patience, kindliness, sympathy, forbearance, and fondness. A wifely caress wonderfully rests a wearied man, and a timely kiss and sweet word will ever pay an exorbitant interest.

When a couple disagree, gossips and "the public" usually take sides and blame one or the other, and say, " he is in fault," or " she is." Now, how do they know? How is it possible for outsiders, even in the family, to know about the causes of trouble which often lie too deep for probing? What do they, what can they, know about the private and strictly secret causes at the base of the domestic rupture? What can other people know of the private skeleton in the closet of each, both, or either? Evidently nothing at all; and many a man and woman has been condemned by the speech of just such meddling fools as are to be found in every neighborhood. A woman or a man are altogether different beings to the "people," and even to their own parents, to what they are to each other; and it is time the "people" found this out! The rabidities of mankind, the coarseness he evinces, the lurid lusts that beset him, and the fearful perversions of the amative passion witnessed in his career, are not the legitimate properties of the species, and will not be seen when the race remembers its descent, realizes its inherent royalty.

In the heart of man there lurks, like a lion in a jungle, the principle of royalty! We are all of us born kings. We have royal marks about us. We are owners of escutcheons that blaze not with the reminiscences of a past glory, but with the splendid promises of a life in the future. These signs of the royalty in our nature are too plain to be mistaken. The multitudes have always set up kings above them, that they might thus do homage to those regal qualities of which they felt themselves to be possessed. We testify, in a great degree, our claim to a quality the instant we begin to betray our appreciation. "Man is a noble animal; splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave," said Sir Thomas Browne. Yes, man is royal, whether in life or death. With