The law of heredity, of transmission of ancestral poison, is as operative in the male sex as in the female. A pure and healthy offspring must be preceded by a pure and healthy parentage. A rottening tree never produces luscious fruit. "Like begets like." An enfeebled father means not only feebleness in the next generation, but also perpetuated misery and vice and crime. Marriage is sacred and necessary and obligatory, but not all marriages are so. There are some marriages from which woman should recoil as much as she would from death itself. Rather that death would woo her than a man—if I may be permitted to honor him with that name—whose constitution is undermined, whose strength is sapped, and whose marrow and blood are poisoned. Rather an old maid than a profligate's nurse. Rather a life of single blessedness than the housekeeper of a wreck of a husband. Rather single and happy and stainless and conscience-free than a mother of an unfortunate offspring, that have the sins of their father visited upon them, and that shall one day curse their parents for having given existence to them. Another remedy for unhappy marriages will be found in the cessation, of the anxiety on the part of so many parents to get their daughters married off. It is but natural that this constant anxiety should make the daughter feel that she would like to lessen her parents' dread, and cease being a trouble to them, especially when there are younger sisters crowding fast upon her, and so she says "Yes," even when the word almost chokes in her throat, even though she knows in her heart that he is not her ideal, nor the man that will make her happy. It is not true that any husband, who can support a wife, is better than no husband. Marriage means more to a sensible woman than an alliance with a husband for the sake of being clothed and fed and housed. She has a heart and soul and mind that have their wants, and if they be starved, unhappy marriage, if nothing worse, is the result.
Mothers and fathers! Have you watched over your daughter from the day of her birth; have you guarded her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood; have you suffered for her sake; have you surrendered comforts and sacrificed pleasures for her sake; have you toiled and stinted and saved for her sake; have you afforded her the best education and all the pleasures and opportunities that your means will allow, and all to wish yourselves rid of her; to think that any husband, who can support your daughter—sometimes not even so much is expected from him—no matter how old, how uncultured, how unsuitable to her tastes and wants, is better than no husband? A father's personal attention to the training of his children will in time reduce materially unhappy marriages, and greatly lessen the miseries and vices of society. He owes his children more than support and chastisement. Society holds him responsible for their character. The duties of training devolve upon the father as much as on the mother. A father's wider experience and worldly wisdom prove valuable contributions to the mother's simpler knowledge in the raising of their children. A father's continuous absence, or neglects, or severity, or unkindness, or heartlessness, has made more reprobates and scamps and criminals in this world than all the failings of women combined. Think less of your dignity and more of your duty. Rather that your child should love you than fear you. You can maintain your authority and dignity by love and gentleness as well as by frowns and threats and chastisements. You may walk and talk and study and play with them, and yet have their full respect. The great and warlike Agesilaus did not think it beneath him to entertain his children during his leisure hours, to join them in all their merry sports, and permit himself to crawl on his fours with his little child upon his back. If you would raise good children let your example at home be accordingly. As you will teach them so they will act. If you are a devil they will scarcely be angels. Children are keen observers. An old proverb says that a father is a looking-glass by which children dress themselves. See to it, fathers, that the glass be clean, so that your children's morals may be pure.
A little more memory on the part of the husband will prove a powerful remedy for the eradication of unhappy marriages and for the lessening of divorces. She is the same woman after marriage that she was during the days of your courtship, and a good deal better. Why so forgetful of all the sacred vows and solemn pledges which you plighted then? Why so constant then and so inconstant now? Why so affable and faithful and loving and attentive then, and why so inattentive and bitter and sullen and neglectful now? Why such a profuseness then in your courtesies and smiles and flowers and gifts and kisses, and why such a lack of them now? Is it because of wrinkles? Is it because of her faded beauty? She has lost it in your service. She has come honestly by her wrinkles. She got them in the sick-bed, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the bed of your sick children, by the grave of your child, by painful night-watches and overtaxing day toils, by your harsh words, and by your heartless treatment. This is all she has in return for her beauty and youth and cheerful mind and happy disposition, which she laid at your feet when you asked her to join her destiny with yours. A little courtesy, a kind attention, a bouquet of flowers, a small token, a word of appreciation and of encouragement is not much to you, but it is a world to your wife. Your smile is all the reward she craves. Her heart thirsts for it, and when given, its effect upon her soul is as the refreshing dew upon the withered grass. It is a mistake to believe that she can draw in her married life on your love-deposits during courtship. If love is to prosper, the supply must be ever fresh. The love of the past will never satisfy the need of the present. Love constantly and carefully cultivated will increase its blessings as fruit trees double their bearing under the hand of the gardener. It will be killed, as will the fruit tree, if the gardener's hand grows neglectful and noxious influences are permitted to impede its growth. Let your wife be your helpmate and not your housekeeper. She shares your sorrows, your defeats, let her also share your thoughts and plans. Unbosom your thoughts to her. Lay open to her your heart and soul. Trust her with your confidence, she trusts you with hers. The men who succeed are those who make confidants of their wives. The marriages that are happy are those where husbands and wives have no thoughts apart. The children that are well raised are those that have had the example of loving and confiding parents before them. Proud of your confidence, she will labor to deserve it. She will study to please you. In your prosperity she will be your delight; your stay and comfort in your adversity. She will return your confidence and affection in full measure. Gloom will vanish from the hearth, and happiness will hold dominion within the home. "Her children will rise up before her and call her happy; and her husband will sing aloud her praises."
Marriage is, perhaps, the only game of chance ever invented at which it is possible for both players to lose. Too often, after many sugar-coated words, and several premeditated misdeals on both sides, one draws a blank and the other a booby. After patiently angling in the matrimonial pool, one draws a sunfish and the other a minnow. One expects to capture a demigod, who hits the earth only in high places, but when she has thoroughly analyzed him, she finds nothing genuine, only a wilted chrysanthemum and a pair of patent leather shoes, while he in return expected to wed a wingless angel who would make his Edenic bower one long drawn out sigh of aesthetic bliss. The result is very often that he is tied to a slattern, who slouches around the house with her hair in tins, a dime novel in her hand, with a temper like aqua fortis and a voice like a cat fight—a voice that would make a cub wolf climb a tree; a fashionable butterfly, whose heart is in her finery and her feathers; who neglects her home to train with a lot of intellectual birds; whose glory is small talk; who saves her sweetest smiles for society and her ill temper for her family altar. If I were tied to such a female as that, do you know what I would do? You don't, eh? Well, neither do I. There was a time, we are told, when to be a Roman was to be greater than to be a king; yet there came a time when to be a Roman was to be a vassal or a slave. Change is the order of the universe, and nothing stands. We must go forward, or we must go backward. We must press on to grander heights, to greater glory, or see the laurels already won turned to ashes upon our brow. We may sometimes slip; shadows may obscure our paths; the boulders may bruise our feet; there may be months of mourning and days of agony; but however dark the night, hope, a poising eagle, will ever burn above the unrisen tomorrow. Trials we may have, and tribulations sore, but I say unto you, O, brothers mine, that while God reigns and the human family endures, this nation, born of our father's blood, and sanctified by our mother's tears, shall not pass away, and under heaven, for this great boon, this great blessing, we'll be indebted to the women of America—God bless them. Finally, brethren, be serious while I impart this concluding lesson: "She—was—a—good—wife—to—me. A good wife, God bless her!" The words were spoken in trembling accents over a coffin-lid. The woman asleep there had borne the heat and burden of life's long day, and no one had ever heard her murmur; her hand was quick to reach out in helping grasp to those who fell by the wayside, and her feet were swift on errands of mercy; the heart of her husband had trusted in her; he had left her to long hours of solitude, while he amused himself in scenes in which she had no part. When boon companions deserted him, when fickle affection selfishly departed, when pleasure palled, he went home and found her waiting for him.
"Come from your long, long roving,
On life's sea so bleak and rough;
Come to me tender and loving,
And I shall be blest enough."
That hath been her long song, always on her lips or in her heart. Children had been born to them. She had reared them almost alone—they were gone! Her hand had led them to the uttermost edge of the morning that has no noon. Then she had comforted him, and sent him out strong and whole-hearted while she stayed at home and—cried. What can a woman do but cry and trust? Well, she is at rest now. But she could not die until he had promised to "bear up," not fret, but to remember how happy they had been. They? Yes, it was even so.
It was an equal partnership, after all. "She—was—a—good—wife—to—me." Oh, man! man! Why not have told her so when her ears were not dulled by death? Why wait to say these words over a coffin wherein lies a wasted, weary, gray-haired woman, whose eyes have so long held that pathetic story of loss and suffering and patient yearning, which so many women's eyes reveal to those who weep? Why not have made the wilderness in her heart blossom like the rose with the prodigality of your love? Now you would give worlds, were they yours to give, to see the tears of joy your words would have once caused, bejeweling the closed windows of her soul. It is too late.
"We have careful thoughts for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But oft for own,
The bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best."
ODD-FELLOWSHIP AND THE FUTURE
There is infinite and perennial fascination in the contemplation of the future. The past is a fixed province, the finished result of an ever-moving present. The future is the province of the poet, the prophet and the seer. The past is adamant, the future is plastic clay. The past is with God alone; the future is with God and man. We toil for it; dream of it; look to it; and all seek so to