20.  AN INTEMPERATE LOVER.—­Do not flatter yourselves young women, that you can wean even an occasional wine drinker from his cups by love and persuasion.  Ardent spirit at first, kindles up the fires of love into the fierce flames of burning licentiousness, which burn out every element of love and destroy every vestige of pure affection.  It over-excites the passions, and thereby finally destroys it,—­producing at first, unbridled libertinism, and then an utter barrenness of love; besides reversing the other faculties of the drinker against his own consort, and those of the wife against her drinking husband.

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FIRST LOVE, DESERTION AND DIVORCE.

1.  FIRST LOVE.—­This is the most important direction of all.  The first love experiences a tenderness, a purity and unreservedness, an exquisiteness, a devotedness, and a poetry belonging to no subsequent attachment.  “Love, like life, has no second spring.”  Though a second attachment may be accompanied by high moral feeling, and to a devotedness to the object loved; yet, let love be checked or blighted in its first pure emotion, and the beauty of its spring is irrecoverably withered and lost.  This does not mean the simple love of children in the first attachment they call love, but rather the mature intelligent love of those of suitable age.

[Illustration:  MUSICAL CULTURE LESSON.]

2.  FREE FROM TEMPTATIONS.—­As long as his heart is bound up in its first bundle of love and devotedness—­as long as his affections remain reciprocated and uninterrupted—­so long temptations cannot take effect.  This heart is callous to the charms of others, and the very idea of bestowing his affections upon another is abhorrent.  Much more so is animal indulgence, which is morally impossible.

3.  SECOND LOVE NOT CONSTANT.—­But let this first love be broken off, and the flood-gates of passion are raised.  Temptations now flow in upon him.  He casts a lustful eye upon every passing female, and indulges unchaste imaginations and feelings.  Although his conscientiousness or intellect may prevent actual indulgence, yet temptations now take effect, and render him liable to err; whereas before they had no power to awaken improper thoughts or feelings.  Thus many young men find their ruin.

4.  LEGAL MARRIAGE.—­What would any woman give for merely a nominal or legal husband, just to live with and provide for her, but who entertained not one spark of love for her, or whose affections were bestowed upon another?  How absurd, how preposterous the doctrine that the obligations of marriage derive their sacredness from legal enactments and injunctions!  How it literally profanes this holy of holies, and drags down this heaven-born institution from its original, divine elevation, to the level of a merely human device.  Who will dare to advocate the human institution of marriage without the warm heart of a devoted and loving companion!