Clarksville chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1857-1865, 1860-07-06
Innocent Flirtations.

If there is any feature of American society which
cries more loudly than any other for reform, that
feature par ercetlece is the system of Irritation
ried on by married women. Nine-tenths of all the
divorce suits brought by husbands against their
wives for criminality be traced directly to "in-
nocent Irritation" And the weak victim of an
elopement almost invariably can look back to her
first error as the time when she received the atten-
tiops of another than her husband. The innocent
flirtations of married women are the aboninations
Of modern society, and tend as directly to subvert
the domestic relations as visiting tippling shops
does to drunkenness. Sidney Smith says, 'Show
me woman who will not blush while displaying
her beauty, grace or charms and you. will have
shown me one whose virtue hangs upon thread
which word will cut" There are some women
who can always see in the many that surround
them in their eommingings with society certain
attractive points in others that their experience
tells them are not possessed by their husbands and
whenever they discern one of these apparent ex-
celences in others they are sure to see a cores
pondng deficiency at home. Forgetting that none
are perfect, such women apt to magnify mole
easiness, therefore, takes possession of them, and
they think over the husbands defects until their
happiness is destroyed, and they are prepared to
ceive the attentions of all those who approach
them, hoping and expecting to find "congeniality"
which their own maginations have convinced them
is essential to happiness This disquietude is height
ened when they consider that they are bound al
81, hi H.,
severed, and as society, though guilty of the sane
failings, perhaps equally with them, will not look
with complacency upon them in receiving familiar
attentions in public, candestine meetings next
in consideration and honor and virtue yield will
ling prey to perverted judgments and sensual appe-
ttes The wife seeks to keep from her husband
knowledge of herpreference for another, until from
her too oft repeated intimacies with others, her
heart is utterly eStranged from him. Then, actua-
ted by guilt alone, feeling herself debased beyond
redemption, she throws off the cloak of privacy,
and energies into the world outcast, despsed and
stunned by those perhaps equally as guilty, and by
society at large. Isproof of this needed Are not
clopements the order of the day? Are they not
coming to be more prevalent than other species Of
crime? Divorces by the dozen are of common oc-
currence, and society is continually nauseated with
the tales of guilt brought to light by the newspa-
pers and courts. We are not that there is any
remedy for this state of things as long as parents
persist in training up their daughters in idleness and
some in luxury and effeminancy-utcrly ignorant
of the true aim and object of exisence-with only
parlor education for the first, and "fast life for
the other having greater care than to carefully
fit their daughters in extensive appearance, for the
matrimonial market, and to establish their sons in
"positions" amongst the corrupt surroundings of
fashionable society," thus giving to both an outside
show, which is entirely at war with the real bust
ness of ife-Erchange.