Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/31

26 with malignant poison, by which I do not here mean syphilis, but I do mean that worse poison resultant from chemical incompatibility, mental and affectional disgust and repulsion, which leave ulcers and corrosions in their train, with death in the foreground. Gentlemen M. D.'s, here's the origin of evil; for even if the husband is not old, but only a hellion to her, she's your patient straightway, and you have a fine chance for the sale of lotions, washes, pessaries, supporters, and all the other vast paraphernalia born of non-love, "in the auld house at hame."

Birth months. Children conceived in May, June, July, August and September, and who, therefore, are born in February, March, April, May, and June, are, unquestionably, better constituted and will live longer, have more character and power than when the double events occur in other months; because nature and weather are more propitious at the start. Conceptions occurring in the morning hours are a myriad degrees better than when that event occurs at other periods. A person's shadow on the wall in a room, by lamp-light, will reveal more of that party's real character than all the phrenology extant, and in its minute phases, too; just as a peculiar smile, observation, movement, or tone of voice will sometimes tell in a second more of a person's real self, than an acquaintance of fifty intimate years would otherwise.

Gender in the human being is a very different thing from gender in the animate kingdoms below the grade of man. In the beasts it means propagation, mainly for food purposes; but in man it stands for, and implies, a great deal more, as will be seen hereinafter.

At this point I wish to pick a flaw or two in the reasonings of the popular physiologists and phrenologists of the day, every one of whom urge their moral pleas mainly upon the ground that the marital-functional nuptive rite of the human being is precisely on a par with the creative act of beasts; that is, that God intended it in man as in animals, to be solely and only a propagative function,—that, and nothing more. It is for generative ends only, and the nervous state precedent to, and succeeding it, is but the natural spur to the God-foreseen result; therefore, say they, the sacred nuptium is permissible only when both parents desire to add one more unit to the