Chapter 66

ENGAGEMENTS.

There now sparkles on your finger a ring that symbolizes the promise you have given to become a wife. You are engaged, and there now arises in your mind the query as to the conduct of yourselves during this period of engagement: How much of privilege shall you grant your lover? As you are promised to each other for life, are you not warranted in assuming towards each other greater personal familiarity? May you not with perfect modesty allow endearments and caresses that hitherto have not been permissible?

I take it for granted that you are not one of those unwise young women who permit themselves to become engaged for fun; who consider an engagement as of so little seriousness that it may be made and broken without regret. I have known girls who even enter into engagements just in order to feel justified in greater freedom of conduct without compunction of conscience. If such engagements do not violate the code of conventionalities they certainly infringe upon the moral code.

It is not strange that girls should fail to see all the dangers of such conduct--that they should not comprehend that thus they become sources of temptation to their lovers, and may even imperil their own safety.

But your engagement is an honest one, your love is true, based upon thorough acquaintance; you have mutual respect and entire confidence in each other. May you not now throw aside much of the restrictions that have surrounded your association and manifest your affection in reciprocal demonstrations?

We often read the advice to young people not to enter upon long engagements, and the reason given is that it exacts too much in the way of self-control, is too great a nervous strain, is too full of peril. I would like to quote just here a few words by Dr. C.W. Eaton:

"Away with the sexual argument against engagements, and let us all set about that cultivation of will and purpose which can make the weakest a tower of strength and the arbiter of his own destiny; and let us say to our appetites, Thus far shalt thou come and no farther, neither shalt thou presume to deny to thy master the best earthly companionship which may come into his life. It may be a far harder task than the ardent and poetical lover allows himself at first to think, but the hardest battles are best worth the fighting; and what manner of men should we become if we systematically evaded life's conflicts, instead of meeting them squarely and fighting them through manfully? Dr. Bourgeois says: 'The ancient custom of betrothals is the safeguard for the purity of morals and the happy association of man and wife. This institution was known to the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans, and during the Middle Ages. In Germany it has still preserved its poetical and moral character. The young people are sometimes affianced many years before their marriage. We see the young man, thus betrothed, with heart full of his chaste love, absent himself for a time in order to finish his education, to perform his studies of science or art, his apprenticeship to a trade, and to prepare himself for manly life. He returns to his betrothed with a soul which has remained pure, with a reason enlarged and fortified. Then both are ripe for the austere duties of marriage.

"'Chaste love, consecrated by betrothals, can be cultivated in the midst of work. It lightens toil, it banishes _ennui_, it illumines the horizon of life with delightful prospects; it excites in the young man the manly courage and the high intelligence to create for himself a position in the world; in woman, the noble ambition to perfect herself to become a worthy companion and good adviser.

"'During the stormy period of youth it is the only means of preserving the virgin purity of the heart and of the body. Does anyone believe that young men who in good season have in their hearts a love strong and worthy of them would profane themselves, as they so often otherwise do, in vile affections, in those relations of a day, giving themselves a holocaust to beauty without soul, or even to licentiousness without beauty?'"

Emerson says: "If, however, from too much conversing with material objects the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow, body being unable to fulfill the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul passes through the body and fails to admire strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, then they pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offense, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls."

And this all means that when the thought of the sex-relation constitutes in the mind of either the idea of marriage, then the wedding ceremony will be supposed to remove all restrictions, and the only limit of gratification will be the limit of desire. Under these circumstances the close familiarity of a long engagement would be a mental and physical tax, because the self-control exercised is felt to be only temporary, and will be no longer needed when the wedding ceremony has been said.

But if the idea of marriage is nobler, if the sex-relation is consecrated to its highest purpose of reproduction, if marriage is felt to be only an added opportunity for self-control, which will be more difficult then because there will be no restraint except that which is self-imposed, then the engagement will be felt to be a time of gradual preparation for that closer relationship which needs more will-power because opportunity is greater.

Under these conditions the lovers will be aiming towards an ideal which recognizes that in wedded life all that is lasting in affection, in tender courtesy, in most intimate companionship, in sweetest demonstration, is possible without the physical union, which in itself is the most transitory of pleasures, but which in unlimited indulgence becomes the most domineering of passions, exhaustive of physical power and of mental vigor, and absolutely annihilating all true love.

If you ask why there should exist this marvelous drawing of the sexes towards each other if their relation is not based upon the exercise of sex-functions, I reply that sex is more than its local expression; it is inherent in mind as well as body, and therefore sexual power may be expressed in masculine courage, energy or daring, or in feminine constancy, self-abnegation, or sweet courtesy. Sexual attraction is not limited to the local expression, nor creative power to reproduction of kind, but may give a stimulus to the intellectual companionship of men and women, and result in the creation of nobler ideals and grander aspirations.

Having settled in your mind your attitude towards your lover, let us consider what it shall be towards your family during these days of the engagement. Naturally you will not feel a separation from the home circle as keenly as do the other members of your family. You two are so absorbed in each other, are so busy exchanging ideas, in becoming acquainted, that you are oblivious to the change brought about in your family. You think you two ought to be allowed the privilege of _tete-a-tetes_, for of course you cannot talk freely together in the hearing of others. This is true. You should have times of seclusion, when, without a sense of oppression through fear of criticism or jesting, you can rhapsodize, or quote poetry and open your hearts' treasures to each other. But you still owe a duty to your home. Doubtless your mother is not now as necessary to your happiness as you are to hers. She is thinking of you with most tender solicitude, she misses your presence, she already begins to feel the loneliness of the inevitable separation. If you are thoughtful you will see to it that the separation does not begin sooner than is necessary. Then, too, your parents need to get acquainted with this new member whom you are to introduce into the family, and he needs to know them. He will think none the less of you if he sees that you do not allow him to monopolize you entirely, that you recognize your obligations to the family and that you expect him to recognize them also, and, in addition, his obligations to show them due courtesy and attention. He is not to absorb you entirely, to take you out of the home circle, but he is to come in and be a part of it, even as you are to become one in the home of which he is a member. You need to remember that he is son and brother to women who loved him long before you knew him, and that he still owes them attention and thoughtful, affectionate courtesy.

Never allow yourself to feel jealous of his mother or sisters. The fact that he is a loving, thoughtful son and brother is in a measure a guarantee that he will be a loving, thoughtful husband.

Let me add to this advice a word more. Do not allow yourself to feel jealous of him in any way. Jealousy is the quintessence of selfishness, and no other passion is so destructive of happiness, so full of the contagion of evil. If your lover is not to be trusted, you would be wise to end the engagement at once. If he is to be trusted, that trust should be absolute. I said you should not allow him to monopolize you, neither should you attempt to monopolize him. There are other people in the world besides yourself, and other occupations than the business of waiting on you. If you make him feel that he dare not speak to anyone but you, that he dare not think of anything but you, he will begin to chafe under the restraint and feel a desire to break the bonds that are becoming fetters. If he were not your acknowledged lover, if you were anxious to win his love, but were a little uncertain as to your power to do so, you would not meet him with tears and upbraidings because he had for one moment seemed to forget you, but you would at once use every possible effort to make yourself more attractive in his eyes than any other person could possibly be. You will be wise to use those same tactics now, even though his allegiance is pledged to you. Be so charming that no one else can be considered so entertaining; that no one else can be so wise, so witty, so sympathetic, so altogether lovely, that everything but yourself is forgotten; and then believe in him so absolutely that he could not possibly swerve in his fidelity to you. Have you ever thought that to accuse one of a certain wrong act may be just the way to suggest to him the possibility of committing it? If one trusts you implicitly, that very trust is a constant suggestion to be true, and doubt is a suggestion to act worthy of being doubted.

You must trust each other or you have no sure foundation for future love and happiness. It needs a great deal of good common sense to learn how to live happily in marriage. You may have chosen wisely. The man may be honest, pure, kindly, intelligent, and Christian, but he is human, therefore not perfect. He has faults, peculiarities, moods, perhaps tempers, and he will probably not wait until you are married to begin to show them. There will come differences of opinions, divergences in desires, clashings in judgment. Now is the time to display your tact, to learn how to express an opposing opinion without arousing antagonism, to yield a desire for the sake of a greater love than that of self, to adhere to principle without unpleasant discussion; in short, to be dignified and womanly without pettiness or littleness of any kind. You remember the words of Ruskin, that the woman must be "incorruptibly good, instinctively, infallibly wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation," and that will be the highest development.

No doubt you will think that some of this advice should be given to young men as well as to young women, and I think so too, and were I talking to your lover I could say many warning words; but just now I am telling you things that he does not need to hear, and I do not need to tell you what, if I had the chance, I would say to him. You are to train yourself and not him, and yet I would not have you ignorant of your power over him in developing in him all that is noblest and best. You should hold him ever to his highest ideals. He should never feel so absolutely sure of your adoration as to imagine that it will endure a lowering of his standards. You have been posing a little before each other. Doubtless you were not aware of this, but, now that you have each gained the heart of the other, you may sometimes feel that you can relax; but this is a dangerous error. You should continue to be as thoughtful, as courteous, as careful as ever; you should endeavor really to be all that you have tried or appeared to be during these days of courtship. You will be none too perfect even then.

Once, in talking to a group of women, I asserted that a wife should exact of her husband as high a tone of morality as of her lover, that she should not allow him to become lax in his conversation with her any more than with any other woman. One woman thought me too strict. She said men liked to feel that at home they could do as they pleased, and would resent a wife's interference with their right to be loose in their talk in their own home. I replied that the home is not the man's nor the woman's alone; it is theirs jointly; that each has a right to demand that the other shall not pollute or poison the air, the food, the water or the moral atmosphere; and the wife who allows contamination of the thought-atmosphere of the home is as culpable as if she were to permit poison to be put into the food.

As a man admires the girl who respects herself too much to permit him to tell her questionable stories, so will he reverence the wife who refuses to allow him to degrade himself in her presence either by speech or conduct. Love would not so often fail if wives knew the secret of retaining it, and that is not by sacrifice of principle, nor by tearful reproaches and upbraidings, but by being true to the highest impulses, and while having the good common sense that can make all reasonable allowance for fallibility, still permits no lowering of moral standards, no willful falling short of the very best.