Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/159

154 house, at the expense of some one else's wife or daughter! It is simply monstrous and impossible for healthy people to be happy in "Variety."

CXXXIX. People who have no charity toward those who, by pressure of circumstances, place, opportunity, or magnetism, step aside and commit a social fault, will upon analysis be found not overly sound at heart, secretly unprincipled, and wofully lacking in the basic elements of genuine man or womanhood.

Prudes are not perfectly clean in all corners of their souls.

Those who demolish bagnios are usually bagnio-patrons! Rakes and libertines have less mercy than their opposites; while those who say a good word for the fallen are the ones who know how it is themselves to be spat upon, maligned, lashed, scorned, neglected; and that too by those unworthy to latch their shoestrings! while they who hate the opposite sex give proof positive of foul personal habits within the secrecy of their own rooms!

CXL. Men often like their wives, as household conveniences, yet never really husband them; and that's exactly what every woman wants but don't get—as a general rule! Now if there is one fool greater than another, it is either the wife who submits to such treatment, when she has her remedy in the exercise of the three principles named elsewhere in this book; or the husband who expects that a neglected wife can really love him, and honestly be sorry when he dies!

CXLI. Virtue, not its opposite, is the normal state of man ' Affection, not passion, is what we crave and yearn for; and finding are blest. When we go astray it is more from the pressure of circumstances than the natural inclination of our souls. Most of us were born wrong, and inherit tendencies not good for us; still in the cultured will we have a never-failing remedy.

The heart's allegiance must first be turned aside before the body yields to passional breezes blowing from off the home-shore; wherefore I hold it better to not try to break the bad connection by force, but by the applied will rewin the straying one to love's arms again.

CXLII. The essence of Marriage is consent. Ceremonials merely publish the fact; wherefore it should be the law of every land that