Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-02-10
Talmage Says Flirting is Devilish.
He breaches ON THE TREATMENT OF WIVES
AND DENoUNCEs FLIRTs OF Both SEXES.

L
AND DENoUNCEs FLIRTs OF BOTH SEXES.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle was crowded to
exces, Sunday morning DR.. Talmage con-
tinued his course of sermons on the MAR
rage Ring" and chose as his text, Genesis,
XIV, 60 "Isaac went out to mediate in the
field at eventide, and he lifted up his eyes,
ing" In the course of his sermon he said :
shall this morning take it for granted that
YOUR marriage is all right, and shall go 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 | charge you to realize
the responsibility of having taken her
away from the custody of her loving parents
and from the homestead in which she was
sheltered. 1t is amazing that any of us have
the sublimty of impudence to ask such a
transfer to home that is not yet constructed.
How ought you to treat her? My
brother, you Ought to treat her well !;
you ought to treat her better than any one
in the universe, excepting God Almighty.
Her name should sound sweeter than music
to you and her eyes, though swollen with
watching child sick with the scarlet fever,
should be brighter to you than May morn
ing. She has first mortgage on you, body,
mind and soul Now, why don't you pay
your debts? You believe in the force of a
contract. If you promised kindness and
faithfulness and have not fulfilled these
promises, then you have fraudulently in
duced one into conjugal partnership and
should be imprisoned for obtaining goods I'M
der false pretences and should be mulcted
for large amount of damages. Oh, fulfil
your contracts Men of business have lots
of contracts and sometimes they take them
and read what the party of the first part and
the party of the second part agreed to do.
Have you forgotten your contract? Then
you had better take, buy or borrow an Epis-
copal prayer-book and read the marriage con-
tract The marriage relation is more sacred
after q baptism of tears-tears over the lost,
over the grave.
Before marriage when you came into the
house you were as full of smiles and polite
ness as peach orchard in blossom week
Now you come in the house and say, 1--WE
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 I'M
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 influence them; the house in which you
live will go into other hands and you your
self 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? | will
tell YOU what you all know. Some men
show more respect to other wives than their
own, and many a man there is who allows his
wife to carry a scuttle of coal up stairs who
will clear room with one bound to pick up
another lady's pocket-handkerchief. Flirta-
ton is devilish. Why don't you put it in the
bond, you domestic Shylock? Why don't
you have it understood before you are pro-
nounced husband and wife? married man
who indnlges in Irritation is either a fraud or
rake care not how high his or her stand
ing, would not give three-cent piece that
had been three times clipped for the virtue
Of masculine or feminine flirt.