Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/50

Rh and his wife either to insanity, the grave, or the arms of a lover who can affiliate with her to some extent, at least upon the external or mainly sensuous plane; and the upshot of the matter is divorce and two wretched lives. Now, in my travels up and down the lanes of Marriage-land, I have seen scores of just such cases; and there are other scores, ay, millions that I have not seen, and of whose terrible secret no one but themselves are aware; and sometimes they do not know what ails them, and attribute their distresses to a thousand causes, not one of which is the real and true one.

When, further on in this New Revelation, I shall analyze the matter, hundreds who read it will see the real point, and, probably, make no effort to better their sad condition. From such unions as these spring a class of children so utterly angular and deficient that the marvel is they ever find peace at all on earth, or enjoy a happy hour.

XXIII. The second general kind of love between the sexes may be numbered and. The first of which is the exact opposite, in nearly all respects, of that just described in Section 22d. It is just as earnest, honest, and deceptive, as the other, but is far more endurable, because there is a better cohesion between them than in the other case; their lives are evener, their marriage satisfactory; their offspring more adapted to life on earth, and in society; their own physical health and that of their children is better; and their union will last longer and produce generally better results, albeit said union is quite as far from being right and proper as anything can well be.

In the first case, to use a meaning metaphor, the first couple only met each other upstairs, in the garret; they only fused in the brain. They could not affiliate downstairs—in the passional moms of the house of marriage; although they were compelled to descend once in a while, it was something to be gotten over as quickly as possible, and to be only remembered with a shudder by her, a smothered malediction by him.

In the other case it was kitchen and cellar life all the time; a monotony endurable certainly, but very unsatisfactory for all that; for it so happens that although some of us overvalue body, its