The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1888-01-19

Down, you miserable wretch!'' Can
halls OF mosaic, can long lines of Etrus-
can bronze, or statuary by Palmers and
Powers and Crawford and CEantry
the pencil of Bierstadt and Church
and Kenset and Cole and Cropsey,
could flutes played on by an Ole Bull
or pianos fingered by Gottschalk,
or solos warbled by Sonntag, could
wardrobes like that of a Marie An
toinette, could jewels like those of
Eugene make a wife i'll such com
panionship happyg
Imprisoned in castle! Her gold
bracelets are the chains of a lifelong
servitude. There is a sword over her
every feast, not like that of Damocles,
staying suspended, but dropping through
her lacerated heart. Her wardrobe is
full of shrouds for deaths which she dies
daily, and she is buried alive though
buried under gorgeous upholstery. There
is one word that sounds under the arches
and rolls along the corridors and weeps
in the falling fountains and echoes in the
shutting of every door and groans in
every note Of stringed- and wind instru-
ment: ssWoe! Woei'' The oxen and
sheep in olden times brought to the
temple Of Jupiter to 4bessacf7ficed used to
be covered with ribbons and flowers
ribbons on the horns and flowers on the
neck. But the floral and ribboned deco
rations did not make the stab of the
butchers knife less deathful. and all the
chandeliers you hang over such woman,
and all the robes with which you enwrap
her, and all the ribbons with which you
adorn her, and all the bewitching charms
with which you embank her footsteps are
the ribbons and flowers of a horrible
butchery.
AS if to show how wretched a good
woman may be in splendid surroundings
we have two recent illustrations, two
| ducal palaces in Great Britain. They are
| the focus of the best things that are
possible in art, in literature, in architec-
| ture, the accumulation of other estates
| until their wealth is beyond calculation
| and their grandeur beyond description.
| One of the castles has cabinet set with
| gems that cost So, 500, 900, and the walls
| of it bloom with Rembrandts and Claudes
| and Poussins and Guidos and Raphaels,
| and there are Southdown flocks in sum-
mer grazing on its laws ana Arab steeds
! prancing at the doorways On the ssfrst
| open day at the kennels" From the
one castle the duchess has removed with
| her children because she can no longer
endure the orgies of her husband, the
duke, and in the other castle the duchess
remains confronted by insults and abonl-
nations in the presence of which l do not
think God or decent society requires
a good woman to remain. Alas for those
ducal country seats! They on large
scale illustrate what ON a smaller scale
may be seen in many places-that with
| out moral character in husband all the
accessories of wealth are to wife's soul
tantalization and mockery. When abb
gail finds Nabal, her husband, beastly
drunk, as she comes home from inter-
ceding for his fortune and life, it was no
alienation that the old brute had posses
sions in Carmel, and ''was very great,
and had three thousand sheep and a
thousand goats" and he the worst goat
among them. The animal in his nature
seized the soul in its mouth and ran off
| with it.
Before things are right in this world
genteel Williams are to be expurgated.
Instead of being welcomed into respecta-
BILE society, because of the amount of
stars and garters and medals and estates
| they represent, they ought to be fumi-
gated two or three years before they are
allowed, without peril to themselves to
put their hands on the door knob of a
moral house. The time must come when
a masculine estray will be as repugnant
to good society as a feminine estray, and
no coat of arms Or family emblazonry or
epaulet can pass a Lothario unchallenged
among the sanctities of home life. By
what law of God or common sense is an
Absalom better than a Deliiah, a Don
Juan better than Messalina? The brush
that paints the one black must paint the
other black. But what spectacle it
was when last summer much of ''water-
ing place. society went wild with en-
thusiasm over an unclean foreign digni-
tary, whose name in both hemispheres is
a synonym for profigacy, and princesses
of American society from all parts of the
land had him ride in their carriages and
sit at their tables, though they knew him
to be a portable lazaretto, charnel house
of moral putrefaction, his breath a ty-
phoid, his foot that of Satyr and his
touch death, Here is an evil that men
cannot stop, but women may. Keep all
such out of your parlors, have no recog-
milton for them in the street, and no
more think of allying your life and des-
tiny with theirs than ''gales from Araby''
would consent to pass the honeymoon
with an Egyptian plague. All that money
or social position bad man brings to a
woman in marriage is splendid despair,
a gilded horror, a brilliant agony,
a prolonged death, and the longer
, the marital union lasts, the more evident
will be the fact that she might better
never have been born. Yet you and
have been at brilliant weddings where
before the feast was over, the bride
groom's tongue was thick and his eye
CLASSY and his step stagger as he clicked
glasses with jolly comrades, all going
with lightning limited express train tC
the fatal crash over the e1nbankment ol
ruined life and lost eternity.
Woman, Join not your right hant
, with such right hand. Accept from
, such an one no jewel for finger o.
ear, lest that sparkle of precious stone
, turn out to be the eye of a basilisk, ant
let not the ring come on the finger O.
, your right hand lest that ring turn ou
| to be one link of a chain that shall binC
you in never ending captivity. In th'
name of God and heaven and home, in thu
! name of all time and all eternity l for
{ bid the banns! Consent not to join on,
, of the many regiments of women VIII
2 have married for worldly success with
I out regard to moral character.
e If you are ambitious, oh woman, TO
Q noble affiancing, why not marry king
a And to that honor you are invited by th
e monarch of heaven and earth, and thi
= day voice from the skies sounds forth
a "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over tn
:. bride so shall thy God rejoice over thee
r Let him put upon thee the ring of thi
n royal marriage. Here is an honor wort
J. reaching after. By repentance and fait
v you may come into a marriage with th
" emperor of universal dominion, and yo
u may be an empress unto God forever
:. and reign with him in palaces that th