In my opinion, the "coming" woman's Alpha and Omega will not be matrimony. She will not of necessity sour into a pink-nosed old maid, or throw herself at any rickety old shell of humanity, whose clothes are as much out of repair as his morals. No, the future man will have to "step lively;" this wife is not to be had for the whistling. He will have a long canter round the pasture for her, and then she will leap the fence and leave him limping on the ground. Thick-soled boots and skating are coming in, and "nerves," novels and sentiment (by consequence) are going out. The coming woman, as I see her, is not to throw aside her needle; neither is she to sit embroidering worsted dogs and cats, or singing doubtful love ditties, and rolling up her eyes to "the chaste moon."
Heaven forbid she should stamp round with a cigar in her mouth, elbowing her neighbors, and puffing smoke in their faces; or stand on the free-love platform, public or private—call it by what specious name you will—wooing men who, low as they may have sunk in their own self-respect, would die before they would introduce her to the unsullied sister who shared their cradle.
Heaven forbid the coming woman should not have warm blood in her veins, quick to rush to her cheek, or tingle at her fingers' ends when her heart is astir. No, the coming woman shall be no cold, angular, flat-chested, narrow-shouldered, sharp-visaged Betsey, but she shall be a bright-eyed, full-chested, broad-shouldered, large-souled, intellectual being; able to walk, able to eat, able to fulfill her maternal destiny, and able—if it so please God—to go to her grave happy, self-poised and serene, though unwedded.
We often think of the solitariness and isolation of the young man—a stranger in a crowded city; suddenly cut adrift, perhaps from loving home influences—finding an inexorable necessity in his nature for sympathy and companionship—returning at night, when his day's toil is done, to his dreary, cell-like room, or, if he go out, solicited by myriad treacherous voices to unlearn the holy lessons taught at his mother's knee—solicited to show his "manliness" by drinking with every acquaintance that chance or the devil may send. That youth must needs be strongly intrenched in the true idea of "manliness" not to waver and turn aside from his own independent course of well-doing. Alas! that to so many the fear of ridicule, or dread of "oddity," should have power to draw a veil over the swift and sure downfall of the drunkard or profligate. Alas! that the little word No should be so impossible of articulation—in a circle, too, whose sneering condemnation of it were not worth a thought, no matter how brilliantly the jest or the song may issue from lips foul with the sophistry of "free-love;" than which freedom nothing is more shackled with disgust and pain; for try as we will, God's image, though marred, shall never be wholly effaced: enough shall be left in every man's and woman's soul to protest against such desecration, though it voice itself, as it often does, in bitter denunciation of what the soul knows to be its only true happiness. The holy stars make no record of the gasping sigh, brief but intense, that their purity has evoked. The little bird trills out its matins, and vespers, all unconscious that their sweetness forces the unwelcome tear from some world-sated eye. Bless God, these moments will and do come to the most reckless—these swift heralds of our immortality—to be silenced never in this world; if disregarded, to be mourned over forever in the next; for the fiercest theologian's idea of "hell" can never, it seems to me, go beyond the consciousness of god-like powers wasted and debased—noble opportunities of benefiting our race defiling past the memory in mournful procession, and the sorrowing soul nerveless, powerless to bid them stay.
To every young man entering the lists against the vices of a crowded city, at such fearful odds, we would say: cultivate an acquaintance, as soon as possible, with some family, or families, whose healthful influence may be your talisman against evil associations, whose good opinion may give an impetus to your self-respect, and whose cheerful fireside may outshine the ignis-fatuus lights which dazzle but to mislead. To those who see difficulties or impossibilities in this, we would suggest the cultivation of a taste for reading, which surely may be compassed in a city, even by a young person of slender means. Good books are safe, pleasant and economical company. The time spent with them is an investment which will not fail to yield a satisfying interest for all future time. Let those who will—and their name, we fear, is legion—wreck health and reputation, for the lack of courage or desire to be true to their better feelings; let those who will, cover their inclination to do evil with the transparent excuse "that it is well to see life in all its phases." As well might a perfectly healthy person from mere curiosity breathe the tainted air of every pest-house in the country. No thanks are due to his fool-hardy temerity if he escape; "served him right!" would be the unanimous verdict of common sense if he should not.
To him who, eschewing such unwisdom, chooses to breathe a healthful, moral atmosphere, it may be a reflection worth having, that he will bring to his future home a constitution and principles as sound as those he so properly requires in the wife of his choice and the mother of his children; and I confess myself unable to see why this should be more necessary in the case of one parent than in that of the other. Such men, and such only, have a call to be husbands.
A CHAPTER ON MEN.
