Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/34

Rh soul in its triplicate divisions,—intellect, imagination, emotion; and is never satisfied until success fairly crowns her efforts. A handsomer race, physically. I never saw than the modern Greek; nor such a perfect race of scamps; for your Romaic rascal can discount all others on the earth, if we except these of New York and Boston, who are lords paramount in all sorts of villany, from the picking of a pocket to stealing a railway.

"I guess I'll make an experiment—only just one," says many a man; and he makes it; the upshot being that from the instant he does so, home ceases to be such to him, and any woman's presence and activities is preferable to those of his wife. But why? Simply because his imagination has rendered the other woman's charms live thousand times more important than they actually are, and yet they are sufficient to enable him to draw disparaging estimates between solid wife and fleeting mistress. New fire, strange blood, has inspired him with fresh passion, and he don't care for the old wife, in presence of the new harlot; and so he abuses one, and lavishes all he has on the other. But you just wait a bit; we'll see how it works in the end,—and so will he; and happily, too, if it be not too late. Three weeks' experience with a mistress will cure almost any man of that sort of weakness, if he have not, by that time, buried his wife's love in a grave ten thousand resurrectionless fathoms deep! He did not know that the strange, new, exciting magnetism meant death to his home-love, desolation to his hearth-stone, isolation to his heart, and ruin to his happiness; yet it did and does, and eternally will, because it is scortatory, malign, fiery, and while it effectually displaces and kills home-love, it fails to satisfy; and its end is bitter ashes. In a weak moment, many a man, fired with sudden and electric fire, has fallen into passion's dreadful snare, and for a moment of delirious joy has bartered off a whole life of happiness; for when once one indulges in stolen fruit, which may be sweet, but is never so good as that which grows on one's own trees, the habit becomes fixed, and "just once" lands him—or her—neck-deep in perdition! His talk—or hers—ought to be not "Just once;" but, "It's all very fine, sir or madam—but it won't