Part 26

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart. Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness and wretchedness, and looks forward to happiness and content, feels a necessity of loving. Without it life is unfinished and hope is without aim, nature is defective and man miserable; nor does he come to comprehend the end and glory of existence until he has experienced the fullness of a love that actualizes all indefinite cravings and expectations. Love is the great instrument of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spirit and spring of the universe. It is such an affection as can not so properly be said to be in the soul as the soul to be in that. It is the whole nature wrapped up in one desire. Love is the sun of life, most beautiful in the morning and evening, but warmest and steadiest at noon.

Love blends young hearts in blissful unity, and for the time so ignores past ties and affections as to make a willing separation of the son from his father's house, and the daughter from all the sweet endearments of her childhood's home, to go out together and rear for themselves an altar, around which shall cluster all the cares and delights, the anxieties and sympathies of the family relationship. This love, if pure, unselfish, and discreet, constitutes the chief usefulness and happiness of human life. Without it there would be no organized households, and, consequently, none of that earnest endeavor for a competence and respectability, which is the mainspring to human efforts, none of those sweet, softening, restraining, and elevating influences of domestic life, which can alone fill the earth with the happy influences of refinement.

Love, it has been said, in the common acceptance of the term is folly; but love in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness is not only a consequence, but a proof of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature. No man and no woman can be regarded as complete in their experience of life until they have been subdued into union with the world through their affections. As woman is not woman until she has known love, neither is man a complete man. Both are requisite to each other's completeness.

Love is the weapon which Omnipotence reserved to conquer rebel man when all the rest had failed. Reason he parries; fear he answers blow to blow; future interests he meets with present pleasure; but love, that sun against whose melting beams Winter can not stand, that soft, subduing slumber which brings down the giant, there is not one human soul in a million, not a thousand men in all earth's domain whose earthly hearts are hardened against love. There needs no other proof that happiness is the most wholesome moral atmosphere, and that in which the morality of man is destined ultimately to thrive, than the elevation of soul, the religious aspirations which attend the first assurance, the first sober certainty of true love.

Love is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds its effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo around age. It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the gleams sent forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem has the most elevating and purifying effect on the character. It tends to emancipate one from the slavery of self. It is altogether unsordid; itself is the only price. It inspires gentleness, sympathy, mutual faith, and confidence. True love also in a manner elevates the intellect. "All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning, and the most gifted minds have been the truest lovers. Great souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true delights. Love even brings to light qualities before lying dormant and unsuspected. It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul, and stimulates the mental powers.

It were fitting that the nature of this affection, which has such power for good or ill, be thoroughly understood, and endeavors made to guide it in right channels. For love, as it is of the first enjoyment, so it is frequently of the deepest distress. If it is placed upon an unworthy object, and the discovery is made too late, the heart can never know peace. Every hour increases the torments of reflection, and hope, that soothes the severest ills, is here turned into deep despair. But, strange to say, though it is one of universal and engrossing interest to humanity, the moralist avoids it, the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is considered almost indelicate to refer to love as between the sexes, and young persons are left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love stories that fill the shelves of circulating libraries. This strong and absorbing feeling, which nature has for wise purposes made so strong in woman that it colors her whole life and history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man, is usually left to follow its own inclination, and to grow up for the most part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.

Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of love; though love triumphs over reason, resists all persuasion, and scorns every dictate of philosophy; and though, like a fabled tree or plant, it may be cut down at night, but ere morning it will be found to have sprouted up again in renewed freshness and beauty, with its leaves and branches re-expanded to the air and laden with blossoms and fruits; still, at all events, it were best to instill in young minds such views of character as should enable them to discriminate between the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name.

Genuine love is founded on esteem and respect. You can not long love one for whom you have not these feelings. The most beautiful may be the most admired and caressed, but they are not always the most esteemed and loved. We discover great beauty in those who are not beautiful, if they possess genuine truthfulness, simplicity, and sincerity. No deformity is present where vanity and affectation is absent, and we are unconscious of the want of charms in those who have the power of fascinating us by something more real and permanent than external attractions and transitory shows.

Remember that love is dependent upon forms; courtesy of etiquette must guard and protect courtesy of heart. How many hearts have been lost irrecoverably and how many averted eyes and cold looks have been gained from what seemed, perhaps, but a trifling negligence of forms. Love is a tender plant and can not bear cold neglect. It requires kind acts and thoughtful attentions, one to the other, and thrives at its best only when surrounded by an atmosphere of disinterested courtesy.

The love of woman is a stronger power and a sweeter thing than that of man. Men and women can not be judged by the same rules. There are many radical differences in their affectional natures. Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the great world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the interval of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thoughts, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her nature seeks for love and kindness. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection, and if shipwrecked her case is hopeless, for it is the bankruptcy of a heart.

Woman's love is stronger than man's because she sacrifices more. For every woman is with the food of the heart as with the food of her body; it is possible to exist on a very small quantity, but this small quantity is an absolute necessity. The love of a pure, true woman has brightened some of the darkest scenes in the world's history. It inspires them with courage and incites them to actions utterly foreign to their shrinking dispositions. Who can estimate the value of a woman's affections? Gold can not purchase a gem so precious. In our most cheerless moments, when disappointments and care crowd round the heart, and even the gaunt form of poverty menaces with his skeleton fingers, it gleams round the soul like sunlight in dark places. It follows the prisoner into the gloomy cell, and in the silence of midnight it plays around his heart, and in his dreams he folds to his bosom the form of her who loves him still, though the world has turned coldly from him.

Love purifies the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character, gives higher motives and a nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous; and the power to love truly and devotedly is the noblest gift with which a human being can be endowed, but it is a sacred fire and not to be burned before idols. Disinterested love is beautiful and noble. How high will it not rise! How many injuries will it not forgive! What obstacles will it not overcome, and what sacrifices will it not make rather than give up the being upon which it has been once wholly and truthfully fixed!

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know it has begun. A thousand messengers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude, and look, the signals upon the countenance, the electric telegraph of touch, all betray the yielding citadel. And there is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings, the first rising sound of that wind which is so soon to sweep through the soul to purify or to destroy. Love is thus a power, potent for good, but, debased and corrupted, is as potent for evil. If it brings joys it may also conduce to exquisite anguish. A disappointment in love is more hard to get over than any other; the passion itself so softens and subdues the heart that it disables it from struggling or bearing up against the woes and distresses which befall it. The mind meets with other misfortune in her whole strength; she stands collected within herself and sustains the shock with all the force which is natural to her. But a heart crossed in love has its foundation sapped, and immediately sinks under the weight of accidents that are disagreeable to its favorite passion.

When time brings us to the resting-places of life—and we all expect them, and, in some measure, attain them—when we pause to consider its ways and to study its import, we then look back over the waste ground which we have left behind us. Is a bright spot to be seen there? It is where the star of love has shed its beams. Is there a plant, a flower, or any beautiful thing visible? It is where the smiles and tears of affection have been spent—where some fond eye met our own, some endearing heart was clasped to ours. Take these away and what joy has memory in retrospection, or what delight has hope in future prospects? The bosom which does not feel love is cold; the mind which does not conceive it is dull; the philosophy which does not accept it is false; and the only true religion in the world has pure, reciprocal, and undying love for its basis. The loves that make memory happy and home beautiful are those which form the sunlight of our earlier years; they beam gratefully along the pathway of our mature years, and their radiance lingers till the shadows of death darken them all together.

There is an unfortunate tendency in human nature to treat with levity many questions most vitally affecting man's real happiness. Thus in the questions of love, courtship, and marriage—questions than which none could be more important—it is to be deeply regretted that men and women do not more carefully consider the wisdom of their course, do not reflect whether they are guided by the light of calm, sober sense or are leaving things to impulse.

It has been wisely but sadly said that years are necessary to cement a friendship; but months, and sometimes weeks, and even days, are sufficient to prepare for that holier state of matrimony. From false regard to public opinion, or as a matter of convenience, or for the mere purpose of securing a home and being settled in life, thousands enter into the most sacred of human relationships with no such feelings as will enable them to bear the burdens which it brings.

Love and courtship should be to wedded love what a blossom is to the perfected fruit. The power of this love must be measured, not by its intensity, but by its effects—by its beneficence in bringing into play a higher range of motives, by the facilities it unfolds, by its skill in harmonizing different natures. Not once in a hundred times do two natures brought side by side harmonize in every part. Of nothing are people more ignorant than of human nature. Very rich and fruitful natures are often side by side with very barren ones; noble ones, with those that are sordid; exquisitely sensitive, with those coarse and rude. This is a consequence to be foreseen from the want of thought evinced by people when about to marry.

Many counsel the young not to expect too much from love. That is an evil philosophy, however, which advises to moderation by undervaluing the possibilities of a true and glorious love. Happiness in this life depends more upon the capacity of loving than on any other single quality. If men lose all the treasures of love, it does not prove that the treasure is not to be found, but that they have not sought aright. In love there are many apartments; but not to selfishness, sensuality, or arrogance will love yield its richest treasures. True love is social regeneration. It is a revolution ending with a new king, and a reconstruction of the soul.

The way of selfishness is self-seeking; that of love, self-sacrifice. It is this self-sacrificing spirit of love that can alone perpetuate its influence and establish its worth and blessedness. True wisdom, then, will say to the young, Love, but love not blindly. Justice is represented as blind, in order that, under no circumstances, can she swerve one hair's-breadth from the right, from personal favor or prejudice; but Love, on the contrary, should use his eyes to the fullest extent, in order that, in days of courtship, no stumbling-block may be left to become a torment after marriage.

A moment's consideration will show how utterly repugnant it is to all manly feelings to jest in this matter. It is one of the most serious concerns of life. Your weal or woe and the weal or woe of those who shall come after you, and the influence you shall exert upon the world, depend, in a great measure, upon the wisdom and virtue with which you conduct your preparation for marriage. All true minds see the manifest impropriety of jesting about the most delicate, serious, and sacred relation and feeling of human experience. The whole tendency of such lightness is to cause the marriage relation to be lightly esteemed and the true aim of courtship to be lost sight of. Until it is viewed in its true light, with that sober earnestness which the subject demands, courtship will be nothing else than a grand game of hypocrisy, resulting in misery the most deplorable.

Courtships are sweet and dreamy thresholds of unseen temples, where half the world has paused in couples, talked in whispers under the moonlight, passed on, but never returned. It should be to all but the entrance to scenes of happiness and content. But, alas! in the history of many we know that such is not the case. We have been but poor observers if we fail to recognize that marriage is not necessarily a blessing. It may be the bitterest curse; it may sting like an adder and bite like a serpent. Its bower is as often made of thorns as of roses. It blasts as many sunny expectations as it realizes, and an illy mated human pair is the most woeful picture of wretchedness that is presented in the book of life; and yet such pictures are plenty.

It becomes all young men and women, who are standing where the radiant beams of love are just beginning to gild the pathway before them, to endeavor to ascertain, with the aid of others' experience, with calm and careful consideration, with an appeal for guidance from on high, whether the person he or she proposes to unite their destiny to is the one with whom, of all the world, they are best adapted to make the journey. If, as the result of such reflection, they are convinced that the choice is wise, they may with confidence proceed to take upon themselves the duties and privileges of the marriage relation. But if such observation shows that they have heretofore erred, as they value their future happiness and the happiness of others, let them stop before the vow is said that indissolubly unites their fate with another's.

Marriage should be made a study. Every youth, both male and female, should so consider it. It is the grand social institution of humanity. Its laws and relations are of momentous importance to the race. Should it be entered blindly, in total ignorance of what it is, what its conditions of happiness are? The object of courtship is not to woo; it is not to charm, gratify, or please, simply for the present pleasure. It is simply for the selection of a life companion—one who must bear, suffer, and enjoy life with us in all of its forms; in its frowns as well as smiles, joys, and sorrows—one who will walk pleasantly, willingly, and confidingly by our side through all the intricate and changing vicissitudes incident to mortal life.

What is to be sought is a companion, a congenial spirit, one possessed of an interior constitution of soul similar to our own, of similar age, opinions, tastes, habits, modes of thought and feeling. A congenial spirit is one who, under any given combination of circumstances, would be affected, feel, and act as we ourselves would; it is one who would approve what we approve and condemn what we condemn, not for the purpose of agreeing with us, but of his or her own free will. This is a companion who is already united to us by the ties of spiritual harmony, which union it is the object of courtship to discover.

Courtship, then, is a voyage of discovery or a court of inquiry, established by mutual consent of the parties, to see wherein and to what extent there is a harmony existing. If in all these they honestly and harmoniously agree, and find a deep and thrilling pleasure in their agreement, find their union of sentiment to give a charm to their social intercourse; if now they feel that their hearts are bound as well as their sentiments in a holy unity, and that for each other they would live and labor and make every personal sacrifice with gladness, and that without each other they know not how to live, it is their privilege, yes, their _duty_ to form a matrimonial alliance.

The true companion has to be sought for. She does not parade herself as store goods. She is not fashionable. Generally she is not rich. But, oh! what a heart she has when you find her—so large and pure and womanly. When you see it you wonder if those showy things outside were really women. Courtship is the brilliant scene in the maiden life of a woman. It is to her a garden where no weeds mingle with the flowers, but all is lovely and beautiful to the sense. It is a dish of nightingales served up by moonlight to the mingled music of many tendernesses and gentle whisperings and eagerness, that does not outstep the bounds of delicacy.

Courtship is the first turning point in the life of a woman, crowded with perils and temptation. The rose tints of affection dazzle and bewilder the imagination, and while always bearing in mind that life without love is a wilderness, it should not be overlooked that true affection requires solid support. Discretion tempers passion, and it is precisely this quality which oftener than any other is found to be absent in courtship. Young persons require wise counselors. They should not trust too much to the impulse of the heart, nor be too easily captivated by a winning exterior.

In the selection of a wife a pure, loving heart and good common sense are many times more valuable than personal beauty or wealth. Once installed in the affections of such a lady, you have a life claim on her good offices. No sacrifice she can make is too great, no adversity so stern that it can shake her firmness or hopefulness. Such a woman is a helpmeet as the Creator designed a wife to be. It is an error, which has proved fatal to many young lives, to marry one whom you consider your inferior in mind or body. A wife has the power to make or destroy the home, and a weak heart and shallow brain can never have the former effect.

There can be no such a thing as interchange of sentiment where she does not appreciate your highest thoughts. Can you reveal to her the sacred treasures of mind, which lie hidden from the careless gaze of others, and be assured of her sympathy? Can she walk hand in hand with you as her equal, honored above all women? Is she fit to sit in your household as a shining light, respected for her gentle dignity and the wisdom of her management and conversation? The quiet, reserved girl does not always possess these qualifications; neither does the bright, gay creature, whose presence throws a halo over her surroundings. The poor are no more likely to have the proper gifts and trainings than those who never knew a wish ungratified. But any woman of noble principles, a warm heart, and good common sense to guide her can easily reach the standard.

There is equal danger before the young lady in her choice of a husband. Young men inclined to intemperate habits, even but slightly so, as they have not sufficient moral stamina to enable them to resist temptation even in its incipient stages, and are consequently deficient in self-respect, can not possess that pure, uncontaminated feeling which alone capacitates a man for rightly appreciating the tender and loving nature of a true woman.

It is equally fatal for a woman to marry a man who is her inferior. She of necessity descends to his level. Being his superior in every good sense of the word, she can not have for him that high feeling of regard which every wife should have for her husband. Lacking that, love too soon fades away, and only the duties of married life remain; its pleasures are all gone. What is wanted in both is a true companion; not one who possesses wealth, not necessarily the possessor of a scholastic education, but one who has a pure, warm heart and good common sense.

A true courtship is with all a beautiful sight. Only the coarse and illiterate can there see aught for ridicule or unseemly jest. It is the flowing together of two separate lives that have heretofore been divided, now mysteriously brought together to flow on through all time, and only God in his infinite wisdom knows how far in the shadowy hereafter.