Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/122

Rh his intentions, yhet he said that, passionally a moderate man was he, and that, save under extraordinary circumstances, he would be content with—what may God protect even a woman of the wilderness from! Finding some Power working against him—for I had taken a woman and a man into my confidence, to enable me to save the girl from the horrible fate threatened her, the old "man" desired me to use certain magic spells, common among the people down South, and other lands I wot of, to enable him to gain control of her, to be used for awhile, as only a human beast can use God's image in female form—and then, utterly ruined, to be cast aside as a loathed and loathsome thing forever, with a bagnio close by, and a darkly rolling, sullen river, in the near distance! For the life of me I was so stone blind as to be wholly unable to view the matter as he did, and so—well, he lost the game; for a young man honorably wooed and won her.

XCVIII. I missed many a good meal by doing as I did. but I kept my manhood unsullied, by defeating a wrong. To this day I hold his own written letter requesting me to disgrace myself, and tarnish my soul, by an infamous deed in furtherance of his abominable and abnormal passion, said letter being written that I might clearly and distinctly comprehend his meaning. That man thereafter hated me with fifty thousand horse-power, in which he was natural, because all animals are rendered furious if their lusts are defeated.

Not only do individuals in their conduct proclaim the cat-and-dog lives led by their immediate progenitors, but it often happens that whole classes in a community do the very same thing; for instance: Once I went to a "Religious Picnic," of the "Reformers," and while taking a drink behind a tree.—it was whiskey, too, a beverage plentifully provided and dispensed by the saints, most all of whom Were excellent judges of the article,—and at the earnest solicitation of a particularly reverend brother, I tried it on; and as it passed along the tube leading to my stomach I experienced a sensation, only comparable to a desperate encounter between two infuriate ironclads, going on simultaneously with an electrical storm, a couple of Vesuvian volcanic eruptions, and four typhoons, all going on in my internal man, until I gasped for breath, and mine eves resembled a