Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/145

140 two d's,—because we are human beings, not mere animals; and both the mother and babe require that magnetic life and vif which only the father and husband can supply.

There is a very curious thing right here: Instances are numerous of a wife descending, subsequent to conception, to other than the father of her child. In such case, the second man determines the shape, quality and calibre of the unborn infant's soul! The woman has no right to wrong any man in that style; for she ranks but as a cyprian, and the child is essentially an illegitimate; because, whereas, the husband has given body to his offspring, the other supplies it with the elements of spirit, and the babe will be more like him than its own father! because spiritual laws are of stronger force than physical! Don't forget this!

But the husband has no more rights in this respect than his wife; because wherever he goes he is sure to bring back a non-assimilable, foreign, magneto-vital influence, which neither his wife nor child can appropriate and absorb; and thus he warps the babe's soul, if not its body, and infuses an aura into the very marrow of the being of both his dependents, which is injurious to all, and may crop out in physical disease or mental ailment, in after years, by the hair-graying conduct of his angular child!

When babes and children have trouble, they cry themselves to sleep; when men and women have trouble, slumber flies their weary eyes. Now when men are careless concerning the substance of this paragraph, they indicate a bad state of puerility; for of all human duties, the grandest is that of fathering those who shall be superior to ourselves. "But how? Suppose an inferior woman to be already pregnant, how shall I, her husband, correct the faults of haste, imperfect organization,—in a word, suppose the child to be has been launched into existence under very unfavorable conditions; how shall I correct the bad bias; and what shall I do that it may come to the world a far better and nobler being than if things ended just as they began? Tell me this, O man of Eulis, and I—I will thank you on bended knee!"

Well put, my questioner. Now heed thou well the reply thereto: —1st. Remember that in her condition your marital offices are