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Love.

But there's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream.--MOORE.

All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.--Sh.e.l.lEY.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.--SHAKESPEARE.

Let those love now who never loved before, Let those that always loved now love the more.--PARNELL.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.]

1. LOVE BLENDS YOUNG HEARTS.--Love blends young hearts in blissful unity, and, for the time, so ignores past ties and affections, as to make 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 cl.u.s.ter all the cares and delights, the anxieties and sympathies, of the family relationship; this love, if pure, unselfish, and discreet, const.i.tutes the chief usefulness and happiness of human life.

2. WITHOUT LOVE.--Without love there would be no organized households, and, consequently, none of that earnest endeavor for competence and respectability, which is the mainspring to human effort; none of those sweet, softening, restraining and elevating influences of domestic life, which can alone fill the earth with the glory of the Lord and make glad the city of Zion. This love is indeed heaven upon earth; but above would not be heaven without it; where there is not love, there is fear; but, "love casteth out fear." And yet we naturally do offend what we most love.

3. LOVE IS THE SUN OF LIFE.--Most beautiful in morning and evening, but warmest and steadiest at noon. It is the sun of the soul. Life without love is worse than death; a world without a sun. The love which does not lead to labor will soon die out, and the thankfulness which does not embody itself in sacrifices is already changing to grat.i.tude. Love is not ripened in one day, nor in many, nor even in a human lifetime. It is the oneness of soul with soul in appreciation and perfect trust. To be blessed it must rest in that faith in the Divine which underlies every other motion. To be true, it must be eternal as G.o.d himself.

4. LOVE IS DEPENDENT.--Remember that love is dependent upon forms; courtesy of etiquette guards and protects courtesy of heart. How many hearts have been lost irrevocably, and how many averted eyes and cold looks have been gained from what seemed, perhaps, but a trifling negligence of forms?

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[Ill.u.s.tration: LOVE MAKING IN THE EARLY COLONIAL DAYS.]

5. RADICAL DIFFERENCES.--Men and women should 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 world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for s.p.a.ce 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 ambition seeks for hidden treasures. 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 bankruptcy of the heart.

6. WOMAN'S LOVE.--Woman's love is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the n.i.g.g.ardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life and interest, circ.u.mstances cannot modify it; it ever remains the same to sweeten existence, to purify the cup of life, on the rugged pathway to the grave, and melt to moral pliability the brittle nature of man. It is the ministering spirit of home, hovering in soothing caresses over the cradle, and the death-bed of the household, and filling up the urn of all its sacred memories.

7. A LADY'S COMPLEXION.--He who loves a lady's complexion, form and features, loves not her true self, but her soul's old clothes. The love that has nothing but beauty to sustain it, soon withers and dies. The love that is fed with presents always requires feeding. Love, and love only, is the loan for love. Love is of the nature of a burning gla.s.s, which, kept still in one place, fireth; changed often, it doth nothing. The purest joy we can experience in one we love, is to see that person a source of happiness to others. When you are with the person loved, you have no sense of being bored. This humble and trivial circ.u.mstance is the great test--the only sure and abiding test of love.

8. TWO SOULS COME TOGETHER.--When two souls come together, each seeking to magnify the other, each in subordinate sense worshiping the other, each help the other; the two flying together so that each wing-beat of the one helps each wing-beat of the other--when two souls come together thus, they are lovers. They who unitedly move themselves away from grossness and from earth, toward the throne of crystaline and the pavement golden, are, indeed, true lovers.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: CUPID'S CAPTURED VICTIM.]

The Power and Peculiarities of Love.

LOVE IS A TONIC AND A REMEDY FOR DISEASE, MAKES PEOPLE LOOK YOUNGER, CREATES INDUSTRY, ETC.

"All thoughts, all pa.s.sions, all desires, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, Are ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame."

1. It is a physological fact long demonstrated that persons possessing a loving disposition borrow less of the cares of life, and also live much longer than persons with a strong, narrow and selfish nature. Persons who love scenery, love domestic animals, show great attachment for all friends; love their home dearly and find interest and enchantment in almost everything have qualities of mind and heart which indicate good health and a happy disposition.

2. Persons who love music and are constantly humming or whistling a tune, are persons that need not be feared, they are kind-hearted and with few exceptions possess a loving disposition. Very few good musicians become criminals.

3. Parents that cultivate a love among then children will find that the same feeling will soon be manifested in their children's disposition.

Sunshine in the hearts of the parents will blossom in the lives of the children. The parent who continually cherishes a feeling of dislike and rebellion in his soul, cultivating moral hatred against his fellow-man, will soon find the same things manifested by his son. As the son resembles his father in looks so he will to a certain extent resemble him in character. Love in the heart of the parent will beget kindness and affection in the heart of a child. Continuous scolding and fretting in the home will soon make love a stranger. {119}

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TURKISH WAY OF MAKING LOVE]

4. If you desire to cultivate love, create harmony in all your feelings and faculties. Remember that all that is pure, holy and virtuous in love flows from the deepest fountain of the human soul. Poison the fountain and you change virtue to vice, and happiness to misery.

5. Love strengthens health, and disappointment cultivates disease. A person in love will invariably enjoy the best of health. Ninety-nine per cent. of our strong const.i.tutioned men, now in physical ruin, have wrecked themselves on the breakers of an unnatural love. Nothing but right love and a right marriage will restore them to health.

6. All men feel much better for going a courting, providing they court purely. Nothing tears the life out of man more than l.u.s.t, vulgar thoughts and immoral conduct. The libertine or harlot has changed love, G.o.d's purest gift to man, into l.u.s.t. They cannot acquire love in its purity again, the sacred flame has vanished forever. Love is pure, and cannot be found in the heart of a seducer.

7. A woman is never so bright and full of health as when deeply in love.

Many sickly and frail women are s.n.a.t.c.hed from the clutches of some deadly disease and restored to health by falling in love.

8. It is a long established fact that married persons are healthier than unmarried persons; thus it proves that health and happiness belong to the home. Health depends upon mind. Love places the mind into a delightful state and quickens every human function, makes the blood circulate and weaves threads of joy into cables of domestic love.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PREPARING TO ENTERTAIN HER LOVER.]

9. An old but true proverb: "A true man loving one woman will speak well of all women. A true woman loving one man will speak well of all men. A good wife praises all men, but praises her husband most. A good man praises all women, but praises his wife most."

10. Persons deeply in love become peculiarly pleasant, winning and tender.

It is said that a musician can never excel or an artist do his best until he has been deeply in love. A good orator, a great statesman or great men in general are greater and better for having once been thoroughly in love.

A man who truly loves his wife and home is always a safe man to trust.

11. Love makes people look younger in years. People in unhappy homes look older and more worn and fatigued. A woman at thirty, well courted and well married, looks five or ten years younger than a woman of the same age unhappily married. Old maids and bachelors always look older {120} than they are. A flirting widow always looks younger than an old maid of like age.

12. Love renders women industrious and frugal, and a loving husband spends lavishly on a loved wife and children, though miserly towards others.

13. Love cultivates self-respect and produces beauty. Beauty in walk and beauty in looks; a girl in love is at her best; it brings out the finest traits of her character, she walks more erect and is more generous and forgiving; her voice is sweeter and she makes happy all about her. She works better, sings better and is better.

14. Now in conclusion, a love marriage is the best life insurance policy; it pays dividends every day, while every other insurance policy merely promises to pay after death. Remember that statistics demonstrate that married people outlive old maids and old bachelors by a goodly number of years and enjoy healthier and happier lives.

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Amativeness or Connubial Love.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONFIDENCE.]

1. MULTIPLYING THE RACE.--Some means for multiplying our race is necessary to prevent its extinction by death. Propagation and death appertain to man's earthly existence. If the Deity had seen fit to bring every member of the human family into being by a direct act of creative power, without the agency of parents, the present wise and benevolent arrangements of husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and neighbors, would have been superseded, and all opportunities for exercising parental and connubial love, in which so much enjoyment is taken, cut off. But the domestic feelings and relations, as now arranged, must strike every philosophical observer as inimitably beautiful and perfect--as the offspring of infinite Wisdom and Goodness combined.

2. AMATIVENESS AND ITS COMBINATIONS const.i.tute their origin, counterpart, and main medium of manifestation. Its primary function is connubial love.

From it, mainly, spring those feelings which exist between the s.e.xes as such and {123} result in marriage and offspring. Combined with the higher sentiments, it gives rise to all those reciprocal kind feelings and nameless courtesies which each s.e.x manifests towards the other; refining and elevating both, promoting gentility and politeness, and greatly increasing social and general happiness.

3. RENDERS MEN MORE POLITE TO WOMEN.--So far from being in the least gross or indelicate, its proper exercise is pure, chaste, virtuous, and even an ingredient in good manners. It is this which renders men always more polite towards women than to one another, and more refined in their society, and which makes women more kind, grateful, genteel and tender towards men than women. It makes mothers love their sons more than their daughters, and fathers more attached to their daughters. Man's endearing recollections of his mother or wife form his most powerful incentives to virtue, study, and good deeds, as well as restraints upon his vicious inclinations; and, in proportion as a young man is dutiful and affectionate to his mother, will he be fond of his wife; for, this faculty is the parent of both.