"The feast of reason and the flow of soul."
the talkers must have rare conversational powers. If it is politics, the country must have zealous patriots among her sons. If it is science, no wonder that under the pressure of this prodigious research, the lightning lends its wings to knowledge, that the subjugated earth hastens to reveal its deep arcana to mortal eyes, and that planet after planet should come forth out of the unfathomable abyss of space, and submit to be measured, and weighed, and chronicled, as their older sisters have been. But this is going too far even for the charity which "believeth all things." Those who have never been initiated into the penetralia of these institutions, know enough of them to be satisfied that they are not precisely schools of science—or, if they are, that the sciences they exult in, are not those which soar towards heaven, but those which have to do with the auriferous bowels of the earth, and the full-fed cattle upon its surface.
To come more directly to the point, the allegation made against these Clubs—made in the name of ten thousand injured wives and mothers and children—is, that they become a sort of RIVAL HOME to the home they occupy; that the influence they exert over their members, loosens their domestic ties, indisposes them to their domestic duties, and not unfrequently seduces them into habits of intemperance and gambling. The clients I represent in this argument contend that they are an unnecessary institution—that where gentlemen wish to associate together for literary purposes, there are always within their reach lyceums, athenæums, libraries, and societies without number; and that as to a social relaxation, it can be had without setting up a quasi-monastery. They urge with truth that any course of social amusements pursued systematically and earnestly by a combination of gentlemen, to the exclusion of ladies, will as really tend to impair, as the companionship of cultivated women does to refine, the manners, and the sensibilities of the heart; that, as a matter of fact, those who become addicted to these coarser pleasures, lose their relish for the best female society; and that the old home sinks in their esteem, as the new one rises. These charges, which cannot be gainsayed, bear not only upon married men, but young men; for the tastes and habits fostered by the Clubs, are precisely those which go to alienate them from the paternal roof, and to unfit them to become heads of families.
After noting down my own reflections on this subject, I met with some observations upon it by an eminent female writer (the best writer, probably, that sex has produced), which one portion of my hearers, as least, will thank me for quoting: they are graphic, forcible, and suggestive: "The Clubs generate and cherish luxurious habits, from their perfect ease, undress, liberty, and inattention to the distinctions of rank; they promote a love of play, and, in short, every temper and spirit which tends to undomesticate; and what adds to the mischief is, all this is attained at a cheap rate compared with what may be procured at home in the same style. A young man in such an artificial state of society, accustomed to the voluptuous ease, refined luxuries, soft accommodations, obsequious attendance, and all the unrestrained indulgences of a fashionable Club, is not to be expected after marriage to take very cordially to a home, unless very extraordinary exertions are made to amuse, to attach, and to interest him; and he is not likely to lend a helping hand to the union, whose most laborious exertions have hitherto been little more than a selfish stratagem to reconcile health with pleasure. Excess of gratification has only served to make him irritable and exacting; it will, of course, be no part of his project to make sacrifices—he will expect to receive them; and, what would appear incredible to the Paladins of gallant times, and the Chevaliers Preux of more heroic days, even in the necessary business of establishing himself for life, he sometimes is more disposed to expect attentions than to make advances." "These indulgences, and this habit of mind, gratify so many passions, that a woman can never hope successfully to counteract the evil by supplying at home, gratifications which are of the same kind, or which gratify the same habits. Now a passion for gratifying vanity, and a spirit of dissipation, is a passion of the same kind; and, therefore, though for a few weeks, a man who has chosen his wife in the public haunts of fashion, and this wife a woman made up of accomplishments, may, from the novelty of the connexion and of the scene, continue domestic; yet, in a little time she will find that those passions to which she has trusted for making pleasant the married life of her husband, will crave the still higher pleasures of the Club; and while these are pursued, she will be consigned over to solitary evenings at home, or driven back to the old dissipations."
If there is any real foundation for these strictures, it cannot excite your surprise that in vindicating the domestic constitution, these associations should be arraigned and condemned as tending to counteract its beneficent operation. The Family is a divine ordinance. It is God's institution for training men. It is vitally connected with the destinies of individuals and nations. Whatever interferes, therefore, with its legitimate influence, must be criminal in God's sight, and a great social evil. On this ground, Clubs are to be reprobated. They are unfavourable to the domestic virtues. They make no man a better husband or father, a better son or brother. If some have mixed in them without being contaminated, this is more than can be said of all. They have inspired many a man with a disrelish for his home; have made many a young wife water her couch with tears; and kept many a widowed mother walking her parlours in lonely anguish till after midnight, awaiting the return of her wayward son from the card-table. Does it become a community, who would guard their homes as they do their altars, because they know their altars will not long be worth guarding if their homes are desecrated to encourage CLUBS?
The following should be read by every woman in the country, married or unmarried—yes, it should be committed to memory and repeated three times a day, for it contains more truth than many volumes that have been written on the subject:—
'How often we hear a man say, I am going to California, Australia, or somewhere else. You ask him the reason of his going away, and the answer is, in nine cases out of ten, I am not happy at home. I have been unfortunate in business, and I have made up my mind to try my luck in California. The world seems to go against me. While fortune favoured me, there were those whom I thought to be my friends, but when the scale turned, they also turned the cold shoulder against me. My wife, she that should have been the first to have stood by me, and encourage me, was first to point the finger of scorn and say, "It is your own fault; why has this or that one been so fortunate? If you had attended to your business as they have, you would not be where you are now." These and other like insinuations, often drive a man to find other society, other pleasures, in consequence of being unhappy at home. He may have children that he loves, he cannot enjoy life with them as he would; he may love them as dearly as ever; yet home is made unpleasant in consequence of that cold indifference of the wife. Now, I would say to all such wives, sisters, and in fact, all females, deal gently with him that is in trouble; remember that he is very easily excited. A little word, carelessly thrown out, may inflict a wound time never can heal. Then be cautious; a man is but human—therefore he is liable to err. If you see him going wrong, ever meet him with a smile, and with the kiss of affection; show that you love him by repeated acts of kindness; let your friendship be unbounded; try to beguile his unhappy hours in pleasant conversation. By so doing, you may save yourself and children from an unhappy future.
When a man is in trouble, it is but a little word that may ruin him; it is but a little word that may save him.'
Marriage, says Jeremy Taylor, is the proper scene of piety and patience; of the duty of parents and the charity of relations. Here kindness is spread abroad, and love is united and made firm as a centre. Marriage is the nursery of Heaven. The virgin sends prayers to God, but she carries but one soul to him; but the state of marriage fills up the numbers of the elect, and hath in it the labour of love and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society, and the union of hands and hearts. It hath in it less of beauty but more of safety than the single life; it hath more ease but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and Heaven itself. Celibole, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.
The every-day married lady is the inventor of a thing which few foreign nations have as yet adopted either in their houses or languages. This thing is "comfort." The word cannot well be defined; the items that enter into its composition being so numerous, that a description would read like a catalogue. We all understand however what it means, although few of us are sensible of the source of the enjoyment. A widower has very little comfort, and a bachelor, none at all—while a married man, provided his wife be an every-day married lady—enjoys it in perfection. But he enjoys it unconsciously, and therefore ungratefully; it is a thing of course—a necessary, a right, of the want of which he complains without being distinctly sensible of its presence. Even when it acquires sufficient intensity to arrest his attention, when his features and his heart soften, and he looks round with a half smile on his face, and says, "This is comfort!" it never occurs to him to inquire where it all comes from. His every-day wife is sitting quietly in the corner; it was not she who lighted the fire, or dressed the dinner, or drew the curtains; and it never occurs to him to think that all these, and a hundred other circumstances of the moment, owe their virtue to her spiriting; and that the comfort which enriches the atmosphere, which sparkles in the embers, which broods in the shadowy parts of the room, which glows in his own full heart, emanates from her, and encircles her like an aureola.