Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/120

Rh the old dead ones, and fastening their faith about equally on the Bible and the manifestations. The fourth class is made up of malcontents; always making trouble, never satisfied; having, here and there, an able leader who has his hands full all the time. The rank and file of this trouble-making army wouldn't pass muster at the gates of heaven; for a more ungenerous, malignant, back-biting set was never developed by any civilization earth ever saw. Born of loveless parents, they rush through life striking alike, hap-hazard, at friend or foe; discontented from the nipple to eternity; full of malice; steeped to the lips with cruel, cool, cobra-like venom, they are never happy save when slandering their betters, picking flaws in others' characters, and in stabbing in the back those whom they dare not face. Beware of such! They abound, and like some snakes, not on legs, arc dangerous. I have already described them physically, so that they will be known when met. I owed this duty to mankind; and I now proceed to pay my little Bill.

XCVII. Reduced from competence to nothing, by the terrible Boston fire of Nov., 1872, I went to Ohio from necessity, and finding materials at hand, in great abundance, made it my especial business to study the workings of the organic law of sex, as displayed in the product of marriages, accomplished at periods varying from fifteen to sixty-five years anterior to 1873. One remarkable case was that of a man in Ohio, a long, lank abortion, whose nature constantly impelled him to find fault with everything and everybody—even himself, or rather Itself; nor was it ever happy, except when going up and down retailing slanderous tales and scandal concerning whoever failed to suit it, come or go at its beck and call, and do humble homage at its feet. Now the fault is not altogether theirs,—these unhappy ones,—for they had no hand in their own make-up (save in that they usually make no effort to correct their shortcomings), but is that of their progenitors. We have no right to run the risk,—of being guilty of the insensate folly of parenting such monstrosities,—for such they are, and moral abortions beside; nor to parentage at all unless mutual love, esteem and respect be the prompting spur.

People of that grade are usually one-sided, angular, not to be