Sylvanus Stall

“ Napheys, in "Physical Life of Woman," says: "From the moment of conception a new life commences; a new individual exists; another child is added to the family. The mother who deliberately sets about to destroy this life, either by want of care, or by taking drugs, or using instruments, commits as great a crime, is just as guilty, as if she strangled her newborn infant, or as if she snatched from her own breast her six months darling and dashed out its brains against the wall. The blood is upon her head, and as surely as there is a God and a judgment that blood will be required of her. ”

“ Yet any one can readily imagine that it is possible for a man of strong sensual nature, who places no curb upon his appetite, to render the life of the delicate, pure-minded woman, intolerable to the last degree. As mutual affection is the heavenly bond of marriage, so mutual pleasure should also sanction its earthly bond. Love should be prepared to give as well as to receive—to be self-denying when self-denial is required of it. I cannot believe that a wife who sees her husband thus considerate will be unreasonable in her refusal. ”

“ The ovules have felt the thrill of life, the beauty fades, the fragrance is gone, the wedding-garments are laid aside, and henceforth the father-nature and the mother-nature of the plant live not for themselves, but for the life they have begotten, and the plants that shall be. Their joy abides, and they live in the glad hope of participation, in the succeeding resurrection of the life and beauty and fragrance that is to await the coming of another springtime. ”

“ What intelligent man or woman shall dare trample under their feet all the sacred relations of life, and call into being an immortal spirit whose temporal and eternal destinies are to be affected by its advent into a world that is waiting to brand it because begotten of an illicit union? What husband or wife can regard with dishonor, or dare debase, the God-given powers of reproduction? ”

“ In its twofold nature love ennobles its possessor. It makes him responsive to the love of God upon the one hand and to the love of mankind upon the other. It gives purpose and zest to life, brightens the intellect, quickens the imagination, inspires purpose and imparts physical power. It beautifies and glorifies the individual, and makes him worthy of redemption. "When it is pure and true it unites two souls in bonds of happiness which never chafe, and which become stronger as time passes and the passions become chaste and subdued." ”

“ The joys of the newly-married are not only noticeable, but very beautiful. The outgoings of human affection are as beautiful and impressive as the relation of the birds that don their brightest plumage, sing their sweetest songs and build their nests in the springtime, when the mating instincts and emotional nature of the birds reach their highest and most animate expression. A young bride, in conversation with one of her intimate friends, in alluding to her happiness, said: "It is too good to last." ”

“ It has aptly been said that children are golden links that bind the husband and wife in a bond of closest endearment. They also serve as a buffer to break the jars of family life. These little ones awaken the best qualities in the natures of both parents. They enlarge and round out those qualities which would otherwise remain dwarfed and prematurely die. They afford a purpose in life for the father and mother, such as can be found in no other object upon earth.
In the study of their own children parents have an opportunity to learn human nature as they can learn it nowhere else. ”

“ She should be able to point out to the troubled wife the fact that intelligence and care will greatly mitigate, and indeed enable her largely to avoid all physical suffering; to explain to her how, as the months go by, the mother-love will spring up in her heart as the time approaches for the happiest hour in her life, when for the first time her own infant child shall lie in her arms or by her side; to picture the joy of her husband and the gladness which will come into the hearts of all who know her and who will come to rejoice over her newborn child ”

“ Many a husband has had cause to regret that in his lack of consideration he has allowed his passion to awaken in his wife such a feeling of disgust as to obliterate her affection for him, to blast the prospects of all future happiness, and render both himself and wife miserable throughout all their subsequent years.
In the first place a young husband should know that many women, even at the time of their marriage, are totally ignorant of all questions relating to sex. There are some women who do not so much as know that there are any physical differences between men and women. ”

“ If the baby coughs or cries at night the father sleeps on oblivious of the fact, but the infant cannot stir without being heard by its anxious and attentive mother. If sickness compels, she bends in anxious vigils over the little life that lies in the cradle. If the breadwinner is brought home sick, it matters not how manifold the duties of the mother, no trained nurse can take the place of the wife at the bedside. In health and in sickness, in prosperity and adversity, during the day and at night, the wife and the mother finds herself the centre of duties, and very often of exactions. ”

“ Liquor is not only a curse to the individual who uses it, but it wrecks the health and happiness of the wife and curses their yet unborn children. It not only affects their morals, health and intelligence, but where the children are not born imbeciles or idiots they often inherit the appetite for drink and become depraved and drunken to the third and fourth generation. The great minds which have shone in the intellectual firmament of the past, or brighten and bless the present generation, were not begotten of parents who were given to excess and dissipation. ”

“ The heart of the home is the cradle; it is the cementing tie between husband and wife. God intends that husbands and wives should become parents; and no pure woman nor honorable man will enter upon matrimony with intentions to the contrary. If they do, God will visit upon them degraded morals, ruined health, financial loss, or other terrible inflictions. The world has millions of faithful wives and mothers, but there are thousands of childless wives who are so because they entered into that black crime of conspiring with the devil to prevent them from being mothers. ”

“ Perhaps one of the happiest moments in your life will be when you step into a house which you can call your own home, and for the first time sit down at your own table. If you wish to perpetuate that joy, see to it that you are attentive, devoted, given to a verbal expression of your affection and an appreciation for every effort made by your wife to render your home attractive, your food palatable and your life enjoyable. ”

“ The idle man is an unhappy man, and the idle woman is an unhappy woman. Industry is essential to the maintenance of good health, to the proper poise and manly mastery of the sexual nature, to a contented mind, a cheerful disposition, to happiness in the home and spirituality in the life.
Whatever of incentive the past may have lacked, no young husband, unless he is without true manhood, can look into the face of his devoted wife and dependent children without being inspired by the obligation which rests upon him to make adequate provision for every present need and future emergency. ”

“ All women to whom I applied for counsel said it was my duty to submit, that husbands expected it, had a right to it, and must have this indulgence whenever they were excited, or suffer, and that in this way alone could wives retain the love of their husbands. I had no alternative but silent, suffering submission to his passion, and then procure abortion or leave him, and thus resign my children to the tender mercies of one with whom it seemed I could not live myself. Abortion was most repulsive to every feeling of my nature, and at times rendered me an object of loathing to myself. ”

“ A wife never ceases to love the expressions of admiration, appreciation and affection upon the part of her husband.
If you start out with a struggle to determine whether the will of the wife or the will of the husband shall have preference and pre-eminence, you may reasonably expect contention and strife for all the rest of your life. Let each seek to surpass the other in consideration, deference, and even self-denial, and the light and the joy which break upon your home in the beginning will abide to the end. ”

“ Were not the sentiment and emotions strong in woman, as well as in man, what woman would assume the responsibilities of wife and mother? Whatever man is required to give up, to endure, to suffer, to risk, even more seems to fall to the lot of woman. Were it not for strong sentiment and moving emotion, what woman would commit her entire future to the keeping of any man? Where is one who would assume [Pg 29] the pains and perils of maternity, with the subsequent possibility of being left by the death of her husband with a family of dependent children? ”

“ If you do not save money at first, the probabilities are that you never will. Debt is a terrible incubus. It will take the color out of the cheek of your wife, it will despoil the husband of pluck and energy and hope. ”

“ Conscientiously to relate these emotions of our nature to the highest well-being of the individual and the race, and to redeem the purest and most sacred relation of life from the realm of degradation and shame, to disarm and depose that sensual usurper which has been enthroned and worshiped in the name of love, and "set love herself upon the throne, fair, luminous and pure," to gladden, to bless, and to save, shall be both our effort and our justification. ”

“ Why allow a single passion, the controlling organ of which lies at the very bottom and lowest part of the brain, to usurp and control the entire man, dominate over every other faculty, and render the physical, intellectual and moral faculties and religious sentiments only attendants and slaves! ”

“ Forgetting the present, and longing for a place and a part when the warm and quickening breath of spring shall again usher in a new day of life and beauty upon the earth the plant henceforth lives, not for the present, but for the future ”

“ The protection and preservation of the unfolding human life is more important, and hence the greater care displayed in guarding and nourishing it.
The future mother, whose nature only recently craved her husband's caresses and embraces, now, perhaps all unconsciously to herself, changes, to fit her for the better completion of the sacred and holy work which God has assigned her. The eye loses somewhat of its lustre, the cheek its ruddy glow, and her entire being something of that pervasive sweetness which but recently made her peculiarly attractive. ”

“ That many women so suffer at the hands of husbands, brutal in this respect, though kind in all others, does not admit of doubt. Disinclination, weariness, ill health, none of these things will excuse a woman from participation in the marital act when her husband's inclinations lead him to require it of her. Strange that, while the law recognizes rape as a crime punishable by severe penalties, there is no recognition whatever of a married woman's right to a control over her own person. ”