OF A PLURALITY OF WIVES OR HUSBANDS.
What has been said of divorce applies with tenfold force to the custom of a woman living as wife to several men, or of a man as husband to several women. We should not speak of these customs, but that we know both exist in America, not among the notoriously wicked, but among those who claim to be the peculiarly good—the very elect of God. They prevail, not as lustful excesses, but as religious observances.
It is worth while to say that such practices lead to physical degradation. The woman who acknowledges more than one husband is generally sterile; the man who has several wives has usually a weakly offspring, principally males. Nature attempts to check polygamy by reducing the number of females, and failing in this, by enervating the whole stock. The Mormons of Utah would soon sink into a state of Asiatic effeminacy were they left to themselves.
COURTSHIP.
A wise provision of nature ordains that woman shall be sought. She flees, and man pursues. The folly of modern reformers, who would annul this provision, is evident. Were it done away with, man, ever prone to yield to woman's solicitations, and then most prone when yielding is most dangerous, would fritter away his powers at an early age, and those very impulses which nature has given to perpetuate the race would bring about its destruction.
To prevent such a disaster, woman is endowed with a sense of shame, an invincible modesty, her greatest protection, and her greatest charm. Let her never forget it, never disregard it; for without it she becomes the scorn of her own sex and the jest of the other.
The urgency of man and the timidity of woman are tempered by the period of courtship.
This, as it exists in the United States, is something almost peculiar to Americans. On the continent of Europe, girls are shut up in convents or in seminaries, or are kept strictly under the eyes of their parents until marriage, or, at any rate, betrothal. The liberty usual in America is something unheard-of and inconceivable there. In Spain a duenna, in France some aunt or elderly cousin, in Germany some similar person, makes it her business to be present at every interview which a young lady has with an admirer. He never dreams of walking, driving, or going out of an evening with her alone. It is taken for granted that, should he invite her for such a purpose, the mother or aunt is included in the party. They would look on the innocent freedom of American girls as simply scandalous.
We have had opportunities to see society in these various countries, and have failed to perceive that the morality of either sex is at all superior to what it is with us, while the effect of cloister-like education on young women is to weaken their self-reliance, and often prepare them for greater extravagances when marriage gives them liberty.
With us, the young woman is free until her wedding day. After that epoch, she looks forward to withdrawing more or less from society, and confining her thoughts to family matters. In France, Spain, or Italy, in the wealthier classes, precisely the contrary is the rule. Marriage brings deliverance from an irksome espionage and numberless fetters; it is the avenue to a life in public and independent action. How injurious to domestic happiness this is, can readily be imagined.