Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1891-01-29

peclally TO flte musical temperament.
He launched into philosophical specula-
tions about the constitution Of society,
and demonstrated what gigantic tyr
amy the marriage covenant was as at
present administered. The time would
come. he declared, when we should look
back upon such state Of things with
wonder mingled with disgust.
Consider the immense number of di-
vorces and scandals that were coming to
light in all degrees of the social scale;
what were they but the blind and in
articulate protest of the individual
against the selfish injustice of the ma
jority? What was the remedy for these
abuses? Did it not lie in the hands of the
superior persons in the world-of those
who could see through the show of
things, who were clear headed, and pos
sessed the courage OF their convictions!
Let them lead the way. Doubtless they
would be pursued by the sneers and
ISLANDERS of fools and bigots; but fools
and bigots had ever been the foes of
progress and enlightenment. We who
take the broader and profounder views
can afford to disregard their clamor.
We said Jocelyn, taking the prima don
mas hand in his, and stroking it gently
can set them the example of courage
and independence, which will sooner or
later be followed. 1t is not merely our
privilege, but our duty, and it would be
base for us to shrink from it.
The prima donna withdrew her hand
as uuobtrusively as she could, and asked
her mentor what objection there was to
marriage if people loved each other?
He replied that if they loved each
other what was the use of marriage?
She rejoined that for two persons to
love each other was for them to feel that
they must belong to each other forever,
and that marriage was simply their open
declaration before God and man of the
existence of this feeling in their hearts.
To make such a declaration was, she
conceived, natural and inevitable i'm
pulse, and it was natural and expedient
that it should be made according to Ger
tain forms, the gradual outcome of ira
dition and custom. Therefore she
thought marriage was not so much an
injustice of society to the individual, as
a demand made by the individual that
society be the witness and voucher of
his covenant.
But Jocelyn hereupon pointed out that
a covenant always implied a binding
promise, involving penalties if it were
broken; that this again implied distrust
in the power of pure love to hold its own,
and that any outside pressure brought to
bear upon a passion essentially so free as
love must tend to promote the very re-
action and revolt which it professed to
guard against. She made answer that
the covenant of marriage was not a
bondage, and had not that effect upon
the parties to it, but that to make ones
happiness known to others endowed it
with reality and substance which were
else wanting to it. That every person
one met tacitly or explicitly confirmed
it, reechoed it and assured it, and that
the welded state would consequently
lose half its delight and security if it ex-
listed, for example, between two persons
on desert island, debarred from ever
communicating the fact of their mutual
relation to others.
Jocelyn here changed his ground, the
better to convey his meaning, and put it
to his interlocutor whether a large per-
centage of marriages were not notori-
ously unhappy, and this being admitted,
whether it were not thereby demon
strated that great many marriages
were a mistake? She answered that
even if all marriages which had ever Oc-
Cured were mistakes, that would not
prove that marriage itself was mistake,
but only that the welded partners had
been mistaken in each other. Upon his
maintaining that every institution must
be Judged by its practical application,
she rejoined that if there were no such
thing as love, there was an end to all
argument about it.
He said that love did unquestionably
exist, and that it was the strongest and
most enduring passion of the human
heart, but that it by no means followed
that we could always love the same per-
son with equal fervor. Life was
growth, and love, which was the essence
of life, must therefore be subject to
growth likewise. AS we developed, as
our minds and capacities expanded, we
put aside the things of our less ma
ture time, and embraced the interests
and the loves corresponding to our larger
sphere. There was one love for child
hood, another for youth, another for the
prime of life. The greater persons in
herent scope and energy, the finer his
organization, the more often would he
find it necessary to change the object of
| his affections. To do so was not in OPP
position to true morality, but in ODE
dience to it; but society, consulting sole
" its own selfish convenience, had arti-
fcially and arbitrarily made such acts
criminal, and had thereby bewildered
and MORALLY injured myriads of limo
cent human beings.
To this the prima donna replied that
love could grow illimitably without dan
ger of ever outgrowing its object. The
need was not of more to love, but to love
more. God, who was love itself, loved
the meanest of his creatures, and what
God loved that, surely, is not unworthy
the affection of the most richly endowed
of mankind. As Jocelyn did not imme-
diately confute this argument the prima
donna arose and gently intimated that
it was necessary for her to be alone in
order to prepare for the evenings per-
formance.
Jocelyn ought to have known the fulfil
ity of argument with a woman about a
subject in which the emotions are main
l. : l..