THE APPETITES. 75 



on the very threshold of this hideous union. She submits, because 

 she must; but she submits as to an outrage; and no gilding of res- 

 pectability can render it otherwise than hateful to her eyes. And 

 when, at last, wearied and disgusted with his own excesses, her owner 

 leaves her in peace, it is like the peace of the damned. She weeps 

 bitter tears of mingled humiliation and indignation, and wishes she 

 had never been born; or, at least, that she had never been married. 

 Such has been the experience of thousands of miscalled wives, who, 

 if the truth could be told without shame and disgrace, would con- 

 fess that they look back, even from the distance of years, to the 

 occasion of their marriage, with feelings of horror and disgust. 



Happiness for the Mismated It results from this, that the 

 condition of true and real marriage is, an omnipresent mutual tend- 

 erness; and that, wherever this condition is wanting, either perman- 

 ently or occasionally, there is not, and cannot be, any true marriage, 

 and the relation passing by this name is essentially vicious and 

 criminal and calculated to produce all manner of evil effects. So 

 long as this state of things continues, there ought to be no other 

 intercourse between such persons than that which is implied in the 

 offices of common and friendly politeness. Standing thus apart, on 

 the high ground of mutual forbearance and reserve, there is some 

 reason to nope that time may heal the wounds inflicted by former 

 errors, and may beget in each a sentiment of growing kindliness, 

 which will at length deepen into that feeling of mutual tenderness 

 which can alone unite them in a happy and indissoluble bond. But 

 it should never be forgotten, that the attitude of mutual reserve, of 

 which we have spoken above, is the first step to be taken by those 

 who would pass from a state of sexual intemperance and conjugal 

 discord, to the high and holy plane of such a marriage as will not 

 only regulate appetite, but throw around its indulgence the sweetest 

 and purest of charms. 



The second step is a little harder to describe, though it will not 

 be found so difficult of performance, perhaps, on the part of those 

 who sincerely undertake this reformation, as was the first. It con- 

 sists in a voluntary direction of the attention, on the part of each, to 

 those traits of person, habit and character in the other, which are 

 most amiable, attractive and winning. The man may recall and 

 remember the charms of the maiden, the dewy freshness of her 

 bloom, the sweet grace of her attitudes and the whole bright picture 

 of her person and presence when these dawned upon him like a reve- 

 lation and threw over him the glamour which made him desire 

 and seek her for his wife. He may think of her first coy and yield- 

 ing consent to receive his love, of the moment when she first con- 

 fessed a mutual passion, of her growing tenderness under the 

 influence of courtship, of all that she gave up and sacrificed for him. 

 of the bright hopes with which she entered life, hand-in-hand with 

 him whom she had chosen out of all the world to be her husband 

 and her dearest friend forever; of the trials, crosses and disappoint- 



