THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 803 



"Young man, you speak like one who had been in the 

 world just twenty-one years, and that, having eyes, had not 

 seen. Do you not know that progress, like all other of God's 

 great Laws, moves in the spiral upwards? That it must 

 bring us around again to the same conditions from whence we 

 started though above them. A close approximation to the 

 savage life and virtues will be the highest civilization. It is the 

 ferocious vices we shall have conquered, and the heroic virtues 

 we shall have attained. These stern savage races go down 

 before the wheels of progress because they will not bend ; with 

 the light that was given them, they are too faithful and too 

 strong to yield. It is a bastard civilization that is really un- 

 true begotten of luxury or lust its children are the true 

 Neros of ferocity and brutality. The world needs brains 

 now more than thews and sinews. The need is too great for 

 true hearts to stop at conventional forms, which, after all, are 

 the mere disguises of unbounded licentiousness. The millions 

 groan, and we must work each in his own appointed way." 



" But I do not understand from all this why the common 

 relation of husband and wife should be reversed." 



" Ah, yes ! Then the constant tendency of this struggle 

 of civilization toward the simpler forms and a purer light, is 

 to intensify the action of the mental and spiritual natures, 

 rather than the mere physical. The mental searches for the 

 mechanical means of rescue, the soul for the spiritual. Both 

 are maddened by the clamorous cries of suffering nations into 

 a morbid activity the results of which are most frequently 

 ' confusion worse confounded' and an unnatural development 

 of the brain, or of the mental in relation to physical. Where 

 this condition has supervened, it is the office of love to restore 

 the equilibrium ; and in the true marriage, upon whichever 

 party the lot of extreme spiritual and mental development 

 shall fall, the doctrine of Utility requires of him or her a 

 life-dedication to the great cause, in whatever direction the 



