Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/66

Rh Fail you cannot. True it may, to quote Poe, be trodden down; 'but it will rise again to the life everlasting. But to its present application. In far-off Oriental lands I was the guest of some Arab brethren, of a certain mystic tie; and one day, in a boat, we sailed away from Boolak, the port of grand Cairo, up the stately and solemn Nile. How far we went, whither, or what for, matters not; but then and there I ascertained that the women of that brotherhood, and some others in that distant sunny land, knew some natural secrets, which their fairer sisters of the West are totally ignorant of. When one of those wives is perfectly assured that, by reason of illness, age or weakness, she cannot safely bear more children without hazarding both lives, she shrinks with unutterable horror from what our American women contemplate with a "pish." At the house of one Mrs. L—ds, in Boston, I once heard a "woman," then on the point of marriage, declare she never would bear a child; but would kill them just as if they were "so many puppy dogs!"—the worse than female demon! The Oriental wife, I repeat, shrinks with superlative loathing from the idea of murdering, or conniving at the murder of the fruit of her womb, as all true women do, and ever will, knowing she were a murderess if she did; and that she is just as certain to suffer for it subsequent to death, as that death itself is sure to come. She knows that the nature of the ties that bind her in marriage will, time and again, subject her to the chances of maternity. Refuse those risks she never dreams of doing, well knowing she would be either laughed at, abused or divorced, or even, if not, that such denials fail to generate quietude in the tent, or peace in the family. What then? Why, she either times her meeting with her husband, with reference to her periods, so as to avoid distasteful chances; or, if accident prevents that, she merely places the ball of her thumb in her mouth, breathes hard upon it, strains and "bears down," and is instantly out of danger, for both ovum and zoosperm are forthwith expelled by the forceful contractions of the uterine and abdominal muscles. In these respects the law of God rules in the Arab tent, instead of the abortional devils which haunt the boudoirs of civilized and Christian mankind.