And what a lesson it teaches;
No passion from evil's exempted--
Whilst admiring the moral it preaches,
It makes you quite long to be tempted.
I agree with those who tell us that society is breaking up, or will
break up unless something is done at once to stop the dissolution. We
have no high ideals of anything. Marriage itself is a mere commercial
treaty, and only professional preachers speak of it in other terms--and
those young people, with a passion for each other, who are about to be
united--a passion that dies the death inevitably for want of knowledge,
and wholesome principle, and self-control to support it. Some of us
like our bargains better than others, but you can judge of the
estimation in which marriage is held when you see how much happiness
people generally find in it. If men and women were kept apart, and made
to live purely from their cradles, they would still scarcely be fit for
marriage; yet any man thinks he may marry, and never cares to be the
nobler or the better for it. And when you see that this, the only
perfect state, the most sacred bond of union between man and woman, is
everywhere lightly considered, don't you think there is reason in the
fear that we are falling on bad times? Oh, don't quote the Romans to
me, and the Inevitable.
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