“Because you do not take comprehensive views of the matter. I can, I think, set you clear on the whole subject, and divorce from your mind the thought that liberty is license. Liberty, in its full, true meaning, is the pure action of a true manhood, in obedience to the laws of the individual. For a simple illustration, look at our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Danforth. She, as you well know, is an ambitious woman; smart, and rather above the majority of her neighbors, intellectually, but not spiritually. Her husband is a kind-hearted man, content to fill an ordinary station in life, but spiritually far her superior. His nature is rich in affection; her nature is cold and intellectual. He knows nothing of other woman's views, consequently has no standard by which to form an estimate of those of his wife. If she was wise, as well as sharp, she would see that she is standing in her own light; for the man whom she wishes to look upon her, and her only, will soon be a pure negation, a mere machine, an echo of her own jealousy and selfish pride. Now, freedom, or his liberty, would give him the right to mingle and converse with other women; then he would know what his wife was to him, while he would retain himself and give to her his manhood, instead of the mere return of her own self. At present he dare not utter a word to which she does not fully subscribe. She talks of his 'love' for her; it should be his 'servility.' They live in too close relation to be all they might to each other. I have heard her proudly assert, that he never spent an evening from home! I think they are both to be pitied; but, am I making the subject of freedom in any degree clear to your mind, my patient wife?”
“Yes, I begin to see that it is higher and nobler to be free, and far purer than I supposed.”
“Yes, dear one,” he said, drawing her close to his heart, “we must at times go from what we most tenderly love, in order to be drawn closer. The closest links are those which do not bind at all. It is a great mistake to keep the marriage tie so binding, and to force upon society such a dearth of social life as we see around us daily. Give men and women liberty to enjoy themselves on high social planes, and we shall not have the debasing things which are occurring daily, and are constantly on the increase. If I should take a lady of culture and refinement to a concert, a lecture, or to a theatre, would not society lift up its hands in holy horror, and scandal-mongers go from house to house? If men and women come not together on high planes, they will meet on debasing ones. Give us more liberty, and we shall have more purity. I speak these words not impulsively; they are the result of long thinking, and were they my last, I would as strongly and as fearlessly utter them.”
“I feel myself growing in thought, to-night, Hugh, and O, how proud I feel that the little being who is soon to claim our love, if all is well, will come into at least some knowledge of these things.”
In a few weeks she expected to become a mother, and was looking hopefully forward to the event, as all women do, or should, who have pleasant homes and worthy husbands.
“I, too, am glad that we can give it the benefit of our experience, and shall be proud to welcome into the world a legitimate child.”
“Why, Hugh! what do you mean? All children are legitimate, are they not, that are born in wedlock?”
“Very far from it. In very many cases they are wholly illegitimate.”
His wife looked eagerly for an explanation.
“All persons who are not living in harmony and love, are bringing into the world illegitimate offspring. Children should be born because they are wanted. A welcome should greet every new-born child, and yet a mere physical relation is all that exists between thousands of parents and children, while thousands who have not given physical birth are more fitted by qualities of heart and soul to be the parents of these spiritual orphans than the blood relations, who claim them as their own. I often think that many in the other life will find, even though they may have had no offspring in this, that they have children by the ties of soul and heart-affinity, which constitutes after all the only relationship that is immortal.”