Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/112

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Affectional Alchemy.
107

sadness, insanity and wretchedness exists among the married of to-day. But it is true, and domestic happiness is the exception to an almost universal rule, at least among the people of every sort and section of this nation, and scarcely anywhere else, in such frightful forms upon the globe. Husbands neglect their wives and practically hate them; wives the same, and universal domestic chaos reigns supreme. The worst of the matter is, that both wives, husbands, and society at large attribute the bad state of things to wrong causes, for the fact is, that the real one lays right before their very eyes, yet they will not see. Such a state of things cannot exist among Oriental nations, or the dark-skinned people of the world. Were it not so serious a matter, one would laugh at the absurd and puerile folly that permits the reign of such social non-concord for a single day, when its causes are so palpable, and its cure so easy. As things exist, wives are defrauded, husbands do not love them, and wives fail to hold their lords in affectional duress. How few, indeed, know how, or even care to accomplish health and happiness at home; and yet, it is in every man's power to make his wife love him, and in every wife's to make her husband worship God through her. On my soul, I truly believe, that if my rules were followed, the social millennium would be close at hand. No strictly good human power can dwell in, or be developed by any man who is sexually unsound, imbecile, puerile, weak or impotent; nor in any woman with fallen womb, leucorrhea, ulcerated vagina or passional frigidity. How, let me ask, in God's Holy Name, can you expect home, happiness or heaven in a family where the wife never, from the altar, where she swore her life away, to the grave that closes over her fretted corpse, never realizes the slightest marriage joy, or anything else than utter and profound disgust? How can a man be constant, faithful, good or great, who is in a sense, compelled to run after harlots because his wife is concentrated ice? You can't expect perfection from conditions themselves imperfect! But there is a clear passage and open water out of this Polar sea of marriage land.

XC. There cannot be a doubt but that the "Philosopher's Stone" of ancient and mediæval lore, and the "Elixir Vitæ" Water of Life