58

LOVE WILL NOT BE CAGED.

may expect a more exquisite and interior communion with each other) to lock your hearts, and give their keys into each other's keeping to refuse the rights of hospitality to any new affection, and to furnish henceforth to each other a given quota, as specified, of physical and passional enjoyment per day, week, or month, due payment of conjugal debts?" etc., etc. Why that with all deference to the laws and customs of immaculate civilization be it spoken-is coming down rather too much like a thousand of brick upon the little god with his quiver-full of charming mischiefs, and the beautiful stranger is very apt to get scared, and fly off to his native heaven of freedom, leaving only behind with you his mantle of illusion. Love is a proud bird, and bears confinement ill. When he finds his nest a cage, a jail, open the door and let him fly, so peradventure he may come back to thee when he has sung his song of liberty among the groves. What good to keep him shut up? He will only beat his breast to pieces against the bars, and then neither you nor the grove shall ever more possess him.

"Leave all for love;

Yet, hear me yet

One word more thy heart behoved,

One pulse more of firm endeavor

Keep thee to-day,

To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid,

But when the surprise,

First vague shadow of surmise,

Flits across her bosom young,

Of a joy apart from thee;

Free be she, fancy-free;

Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,

Nor the palest rose she flung

From her summer's diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself-
As a self of purer clay-

Though her parting dims the day,

MAKE DIVORCE FREE.

59

Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive."

Lovers! is your joy so full, so solemn, that it invokes the public sympathy of all your families and friends?

Receive them then. I do not question the value of illusions-all mankind are your friends while you are happy, and have no need of them. Is your sense of complete fulfillment in each other such as to claim the consonance of the church's consecration? Receive it then. I know the value of illusions. I do not question whether there be, as yet, any true church on earth. Though the church be built over a grog cellar, and supported by the rents of brothels-though the minister be a lecherous hypocrite, and the deacons only speculators in pews, if the prejudices of your education have consecrated this church, the least the church can do in return is to consecrate your union. Swear, if you will, to love each other through eternity-that, without the law, will not keep you from separating next week, if you find yourselves disappointed in each other. Make divorce free at the option of the parties, and take out of your marriage contract the feature of exclusiveness; when you discover your mistake, it may then be rectified.

al

If you remain constant to each other alone by preference, it is well; if you have not such preference, it is better for yourselves and your children and all concerned that you should separate. What need, then, of legal formalities? Do you ready mistrust that affection whose exclusiveness and eternity, or life-endurance, you are swearing? Or do you take marriage to be a surgical operation, that you invoke the assistance of some external force to hold and bind you in it?

But, sir, interrupts some lawyer, you are barking up the wrong tree-people wish the law to interfere in order to adjust and secure the relations of property. Ah, then marriage is not after all the bond of love, so much as of money. Be that as you will; cannot the law secure on either side the rights or

60

PROVISION FOR CHILDREN.

wrongs of parties quite as well, leaving them free to separate when they choose, or to form other love relations in the meantime? If lovers then promise maintenance only during the term of mutual fidelity, it will clearly have the very moral effect of checking infidelity, while now a woman may lavish the fortune of a husband to sustain the extravagance of a lover, or on children which the husband knows are not his own, and this injured husband has no redress but in the still greater nuisance of a public action at law for divorce, in which he is not at all sure of success at last.*

An effect of annulling legal interference with the union of the sexes, which moralists will less approve, and which I consider all important, is that of urging woman to qualify herself for social independence and equality with man in positions of honor and profit. Let woman make herself pecuniarily independent of man, and there will no longer be need of law contracts in regard to property. Each will by free donations assist the other in emergency, and contribute toward the support of children, man naturally the largest share of money as woman the largest share of time and trouble. As to children who are orphaned either by the death of their parents, or by desertion, or by poverty, they fall naturally to the providence of the state and its special institutions.

South Carolina owes to her orphan asylum some of her most solid and valuable public characters. Every thing here should display an enlightened munificence, contrasting most favorably with the poverty stricken education of the isolated family, and the estimated expenses of each child be liquidated in part by the proceeds of his own well-directed labors while connected

* I have known in Philadelphia of a respectable merchant, who, retiring from bu. siness very wealthy, married a lady considerably younger than himself, but with whom he lived in the greatest apparent harmony, until being necessarily absent in Europe for a few months, he found on his return his wife, on whom he had perma nently settled a large fortune, married to another man! She had by some slight of hand process obtained a divorce without any just cause, and effected a perfect swindle. Such is the inconsistency of our legal forms. A woman who makes over her fortune to her husband is still more frequently in this predicament of being ruined to support his mistresses and encourage his licentiousness.

with the institution, in part by charitable donations or loan from the state treasury, until the debt of honor thus contracted by the orphan child shall be repaid by him when a man grown.

CHAPTER III.

INFLUENCE OF MARRIAGE UPON THE YOUNG UNMARRIED PERSONS OF BOTH SEXES.

LOVE.

NEAR the midnight watches,
When the Bear now turns

By the hand of Orion ;
When all the busy tribes
Of articulate, speaking
Mortals repose-

Then Love, approaching,
Knocked at my door.
Who, said I, knocks there,
Breaking my dreams?
But Love replied,

Open; I am a child; fear not.
I am wet, and have wandered
Through the moonless night.
Hearing this I pitied him;
And quickly striking a light,
I opened, and behold!

A winged child, bearing a bow,
With quiver of arrows.

Seating him near my hearth,
I warmed his hands,

And wrung the water
From his hair.

But he, when his blood thawed,

Said, Come; let us try this bow,

Whether my wet string is spoiled.

He twanged, and struck me in mid liver,
Like a gad fly;

Then jumps up with a hearty laugh,

Saying, Rejoice, my host, with me,

For my bow is sound;

But thou shalt labor in thy heart.

62

INFLUENCE OF MARRIAGE

FIRST, let us consider the influence of the institution, per se, afterward, that of its representatives, the married classes. There is no social absurdity more pernicious and hostile to the existence of candid and generous relations between young men and young women, even between boys and girls, than the constant necessity created by marriage, to examine, criticise, and judge each others conduct in reference to this standard. It makes the two sexes afraid of each other, suspicious of each other, especially girls and young women of men, since woman is most dependent and most the victim of an ill-assorted union. Not only does this fear of being compromised destroy all candor and freedom in love, falsifying by constraint and suspicion the spiritual element, and denying the material in toto, but it renders friendship nearly impossible between persons of opposite sex. No young lady dares receive proofs of friendship from a young unmarried man, lest it should be construed as an admission of love, and place her in a false position with him. Still less are ties of friendship permissible between young married women and other men than their husbands. Suspicion of a bachelor's intentions under these circumstances arouses conjugal jealousy, and mars the peace of the household.

A young man feels devoted friendship for an unmarried woman who has for him in return the kindest feelings. Weeks and months of each others occasional society, in families reposing absolute confidence in their young people, and placing no obstructions in the way of their friendly relations abroad, have cherished this germ of friendship, and without sexual passion, or desire for the rites of love on either side, have prepared from it a divine consolation, a pure avenue for each with the spirit world; a source of devoted sympathy in the joys and sorrows of this life, of firm reliance in trouble, of hearty aid in the attainment of noble purposes, of counsel and co-operation; finally, an accord in the major sphere of friendship, the most brilliant and pure, softened and exalted by that peculiar charm which the difference of sex lends to all ties of social affection in other spheres as well as its specific one of love.

Suppose that at any period during the formation of such a