Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/45

40 ton of doctor's stuff thrown in. Now for the other point: No sooner does an American boy get on his first pair of pants than he has prurient notions right straight along, and takes good care to demonstrate them with chalk upon the walls and fences everywhere. Now this is not so dreadful after all,—for such antics characterize all young animals,—provided his elders would take him in hand and teach him the true meaning of the origin of the strange ideas which from morbid nature, inculcation, precept and example of his associates he has imbibed, but does not comprehend.

I have said that this nation was the most passional one on earth. But then you know that nations and individuals are exactly alike; moved by the same forces, governed by the same principles, prompted by the same motives; and remember too, that this nation is but a boy yet, not out of its teens; hence, its universal pudicity is not to be wondered at; nor that its principal, most sincere and best-paid-for worship is, and for some time to come yet will be, at the passional shrine, in or out of wedlock. The same thing prevails all over the globe, and likely for the same reason; i. e., because as yet it is but a baby-world! At all events its worship is of the character already set forth; and its best men have been the most earnest devotees; for somehow or other, there is not and never has been a really great man in it but who has been more or less chargeable with practices not accordant with the strictest rules of nun-ship or monk-hood—which is oftener—in results—monkey-hood instead.

XVII. Hargrave Jennings, of England, the eminent Rosicrucian, writing upon the subject of the Garter, and before quoting Ashmole in regard to the same matter, observes: "All the world knows the chivalric origin of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. It arose in a princely act, rightly considered princely, when the real, delicate, inexpressibly high-bred motive and its circumstances are understood, which motive is systematically and properly concealed. Our great King Edward III. picked from the floor, with the famous words of the motto of the Order of the Garter, the "garter," or, as we interpret it, by adding a new construction with hidden meanings, the "garder" [gaurder, P. B. R.], (or especial cestus, shall we call it?) of the beautiful and celebrated Countess of Salisbury, with whom, it