304 THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER. 



after years, the mingling of unknown temperaments, 

 together with the destruction of reverence for woman 

 by treating her as an article of barter, make the 

 chances small of it blossoming into a flower. 



Courtship, with its vivid perceptions and quickened 

 emotions, is a great opportunity for Evolution ; and to 

 institute and lengthen reasonably a period so rich in 

 impression is one of its latest and highest efforts. To 

 give love time, indeed, has been all along, and through 

 a great variety of arrangements, the chief means of 

 establishing it on the earth. Unfortunately, the lesson 

 of Nature here is being all too slowly learned even 

 among nations with its open book before them. In 

 some of the greatest of civilized countries, real mutual 

 knowledge between the youth of the sexes is unattain- 

 able ; marriages are made only by a higher kind of 

 purchase, and the supreme step in life is taken in the 

 dark. Whatever safeguards this method provides it 

 cannot be final, nor can those nations rise to any ex- 

 alted social height or moral greatness till some change 

 occurs. It has been given especially to one nation to 

 lead the world in its assault upon this mistaken law, 

 and to demonstrate to mankind that in the uncon- 

 strained and artless relations of youth lie higher safe- 

 guards than the polite conventions of society can 

 afford. The people of America have proved that the 

 blending of the sweet currents of different family-lives 

 in social intercourse, in recreation, and — most original 

 of all — in education, can take place freely and joyously 

 without any sacrifice of man's reverence for woman, or 

 woman's reverence for herself; and, springing out of 

 these naturally mingled lives, there must more and * 

 more come those sacred and happy homes which art 



