Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/144

Rh submerge us at any instant! With it, we are life-boated into fair havens and secure anchorage! With it, we arise into bliss and blessedness; without it, misery is our lot; for it is the telegraphic System wherewith God engirdles the worlds! From Him it goes; to Him it returns, bringing up from the deeps the poor forlorn ones it finds there, and stringing them like beads to hang round the neck of the ineffable and viewless Lord of infinite and superlative glory!

CXIII. At first Love springs up and surges in our souls, a new-born and strange power, which rules us with a rod of iron. At the start it is vague, general, diffusive; and we are glad without knowing the reasons why, like unto the babe quickened en utero; and we are irresistibly urged to centre it on some one, some reciprocating soul; and unless we do, wretched are we! If we fail so to do, but expend its forces here, there, everywhere, anywhere, we speedily cease to be truly human; but sink till we are the bond slaves of pernicious, debasing, demoralizing habit, from which there may be deliverance, but a very troublous one. We must love one; for unless we do the measure of our life on earth is unfilled.

CXIV. The new soul descends to man; by him is bequeathed and entrusted to the dear mother's care, during those mysterious forty weeks. By her it is robed in flesh and blood, and during the wonderful and thrice holy process she needs all the vital life that he can spare; and it is his bounden duty to impart it in every possible form, from the gentle caress to the kind word and act of tender gallantry. She knows when she requires magnetism, and she is to be sole and supreme judge of when, and where and how that vital power shall be imparted! Do not forget this.

An hour's rest on his loving shoulder at the eventide, just as they sit by the open casement, is sometimes of more value to an unwell woman, than untold gold and diamonds would be at another time, and under different conditions.

Moreover. I have no patience with the puerile jargon of the "Physiologists." to the end that the great climax of connubiality ought always to cease from the conceptive moment till after lactation;—that non-intercourse should he the rule, and rigidly enforced, all of which I regard as stupid nonsense—prefixed with a dash and