Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/21

16 borne a child to a white father ever to give birth to one perfectly negro,—even though its father, like herself, has never a drop of other blood in him,—for the reason that the blood of the white man, through his child, has mingled in the mother's veins. More than that, her blood under the microscope will not show the same crystalline forms after the birth of the mixed child as it did before. Just so is it impossible for us not to be made better or worse by lip touching.

Harlots invariably descend unless snatched from ruin by a miracle. It is because of the many forms of hell struggling in their veins, combating in their nerves; and as heaven or its opposite attends the kiss so also is it with every other sort of human contact—even the ordinary shaking of the hands. Gloves, therefore, have new uses.

I awoke from my slumber a wiser, and, I trust, a better man. I went out and found my soul-harried and victimized friend. I reasoned with him just as I had with my own soul a while before. I told him it was clear as sunlight that the absent woman really cared not a straw for him, but only for what current funds she could extract from him; and that, although to lose her was a bitter draught of gall, yet he had better swallow it, for that he was only loving his own sphere wherewith he had embalmed her. I asked what right had he to hold a woman in duress convert or non-couvert, whose soul was not attached by love to his; whose compliance, duty only, not affectional. It was clear he ought to give her up at once even if the effort snapped his heart-strings, because the making of her child was a doubtful question. Why should he pursue a heartless phantom? They were disunited in soul. Behold the folly of continuance! Let her go!

III. As previously remarked herein, writers upon the general topics of love and its offices, uses, abuses, nature, moods, and modes, have, in the main, been content with the merely superficial or external view thereof, and have, as a general thing, utterly ignored most, if not all, of the other and deeper significances attached thereunto; and not one of them has even attempted to tell mankind any more of the principles underlying sex, Love, and their copula passion, or desire, than any one's personal experience suggests; but