The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1886-03-18
Talmage on Flirting.

II shall this morning take it FOR
granted that your marriage is all right,
and I shallgo on and advise you how
to treat your wife. My ambition is
to tell you more plain truth than you
have ever heard in any three-quarters
of an hour in all your life. And first
OF all l charge you to realize the re-
sponsibility of having taken her away
from the custody of her loving parents
and from the homestead in which che
was sheltered. 1t is amazing that any
OF us have the sublimity of impudence
to ask such trasfer to home that
is not yet constructed. How ought
you to treat her? My brother, you
ought to treat her better than any
one in the universe, excepting God AL
mighty. Her name should sound
sweeter than music to you and her eyes,
though swollen, with watching q child
sick with scarlet fever, should
be brighter to you than a May
morning. She has first mort
gage on you, body, mind and soul.
Now, why don't you pay your debts?
You believe in the force of contract.
Ii you promised kindness and faithful
ness and have not fulfilled these
promises, then you have fraudulently
induced one into conjugal partnership
and should he imprisoned for obtaining
goods under false pretenses and should
be mulcted for large amount Of dam
ages. 0, fulfill your contracts! Men of
business have lots of contracts and
sometimes they take them and read
what the party of the first part and
and the party of the second part
agreed to do. Have you forgotten
your contract? Then you had better
take, buy, or borrow an Episcopal
prayer-book and read the marriage
contract. The marriage relation Is
more sacred after a baptism of tears
tears over the lost, over the grave.
Before marriage when you came in
to the house you were as full of smiles
and politeness as q peach orchard in
blossom week. Now you come into
the house and say, I've lost money
to-day You sit down at the table,
criticising the food and snatch up the
evening newspaper. The children are
awed at the domestic autocrat.
Though filled with healthful curiosity,
they must ask no questions; the wife
has had annoyance in the kitchen un-
til her nerves are all like spikes. My
brother, you have no appreciation of
the fact that your children will be
soon grown up or in cemeteries and
you will have no opportunity to in
fluence them; the house in which you
live will 60 into other hands and you
yourself will be gone. Marriage
is bargain. In some lands
people purchase their wives with
cattle and sheep. In our land
marriage is an affectionate bargain
in which man promises protection,
support, companionship and love. Are
you fulfilling all that bargain? I will
tell you what you all know. Some
men show more respect to other wives
than their own, and many man
there is who allows his wife to carry a
scuttle of coal upstairs who will clear
room with one bound to pick up an
other lady g pocket handkerchief. Fir
tation is devillsh. Why don't you
put it in the bond, you domestic Shy
lock? Why don't you have it under
stood before you are pronounced hus-
band and wife? A married man who
INDUCES in Irritation is either fraud
or a rake. I care not how high his or
her standing, Iwould not give three
cent piece that had been three times
clipped for the virtue of masculine or
feminine firt."