If our young people were taught what they ought to know--if it were told them from infancy up--if it were drilled into them and they were made to understand what now is all a mystery to them--a dark, vague, unriddled mystery--hearts would be happier, homes would be brighter, lives would be worth living and the world would be better.
"GOOD NIGHT! GOOD NIGHT! PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW, THAT I SHALL SAY GOOD NIGHT TILL IT BE MORROW."]
This is now the matter--matter grave and serious enough--which we have in hand. There are gems of wisdom founded on health, morality, happiness, which should be put within reach of every household in our whole broad land. It is a most important, yet neglected subject. People are squeamish, cursed with mock modesty, ashamed to speak with their lips what their Creator spoke through their own minds and bodies when he formed them. It is time such nonsense--nonsense shall we say?--rather say it is time such fatal folly were withered and cursed by the sober common sense and moral duty of universal society.
Courtship! Its theme, how delightful! Its memories and associations, how charming! Its luxuries the most luxurious proffered to mortals! Its results how far reaching, and momentous! No mere lover's fleeting bauble, but life's very greatest work! None are equally portentous, for good and evil.
God's provisions for man's happiness are boundless and endless. How great are the pleasures of sight, motion, breathing! How much greater those of mind! Yet a right love surpasses them all; and can render us all happier than our utmost imaginations can depict; and a wrong more miserable.
Right love-making is more important than right selection; because it affects conjugal life for the most. Men and women need knowledge concerning it more than touching anything else. Their fatal errors show their almost universal ignorance concerning it. That most married discords originate in wrong love-making instead of selection, is proved by love usually declining; while adaptation remains the same.
Right courtship will harmonize natural discordants, much more concordants, still more those already in love; which only some serious causes can rupture. The whole power of this love element is enlisted in its perpetuity, as are all the self-interests of both. As nature's health provisions are so perfect that only its great and long-continued outrage can break it; so her conjugal are so numerous and perfect that but for outrageous violation of her love laws all who once begin can and will grow more and more affectionate and happy every day.