must part or fall! The only safety is in instant flight! This thing is thought to be a mental or spiritual affair; it is not so! It is physical.
The tests of diseased love are various; but a harsh, cracked voice is an infallible sign. A deep, round, full-toned one is a sign of health. The walk is also a method of judgment. Show me a man's well-worn boot, or a woman's shoe, and I'll tell you the state of their love in five minutes. If I was a young woman, I would marry the man whose avowed affection for me survived a good strong course of cathartic medicine, and cold baths in the winter. It's astonishing to behold the effect of cold water poured down the back of an ardent lover. It will make him swear, very likely. If love is so ethereal, why is it always thus affected by blue-pills and shower-baths? Why can't it withstand hunger, cold, sea-sickness, and calomel?
If love isn't material, why do honeymoons degenerate into the worst sort of vinegar so soon?
In conclusion, let me say, that while contending for the materiality of love, I do not deny the existence of a moral force somewhat analogous. They call this force religion, and its domain is the human soul, just as love is in the human body. We shall outlive all earthly loves and all earthly unions ; for the only mission of love is to stock the world. To that country where we go at death, we shall carry our religion, our hopes, affections, memories, faith, justice, pity, mercy, benevolence, generosity, and goodness; but purely earthly phases of love are then left behind. We shall no longer fall before it, no longer struggle in its toils — no longer be led astray by its falsehoods, or be pierced by its arrows. When I get there, I expect to grow new loves, fitted and adapted to the new conditions. When there, it will be time enough to exercise my "divine loves and nature," for there, perhaps, they will be needed; but while here our time is best employed in purifying the every-day human lives, and cultivating and cleansing the human loves. Philosophers may call us all by the title "angel;" perhaps they are such, but as for me, I am only a poor, weak, fallible, erring man and my neighbors found it out.
It very often happens that while people are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, libelling his opinions — that man, in solitude, is, perhaps, shedding hot
