Laxative

“ What fatality attaches me to this woman? Are there not a hundred others who wish I would pay attention to them, and eagerly accept it? If even none were so enchanting, the charms of variety, the allurements of new conquests, the splendour of the number; do not they afford a plentiful harvest of soft pleasures? Why, then, do I run madding after this one that flies me, and neglect those that offer? I am at a loss to account for it, but so it is.—There is no happiness, no repose for me, until I possess this woman, whom I love and hate with equal rage. ”

“ When I recall the events of yesterday! What do I say? Even of yesterday night! That glance so sweet, that voice so tender, and that pressure of the hand! And all the time, she was planning flight from me! O women, women! After this, complain that you are deceived! Yes, any perfidy that one employs is a theft from your store.
What pleasure I shall take in avenging myself! I shall find her again, this perfidious woman; I shall resume my empire over her. If love sufficed to procure me the means of that, what will it not do when assisted by vengeance? ”

“ Still would not that innocent heart, that soft and easy temper, be moulded to good more readily than it was hurried to evil? What young person, just come out of a convent, without experience, and almost divested of ideas, and bringing with her into the world, as most always happens, an equal share of ignorance of good and evil; what young person could have resisted such culpable artifices more? In order to inspire us with some indulgence, it is sufficient to reflect on how many circumstances, independent of us, is the frightful alternative from delicacy, to the depravity of sentiment. ”

“ If it be improper for a man to allude to this effect of lacing, what is it for a woman to cause and experience it? Let me tell you, Miss Fastidious, that the less you say about this, the better; because I have truth on my side, and because it is high time that men who wish virtuous wives, knew it, so that they may avoid those who have inflamed and exhausted this element of their nature. It is also high time that virtuous woman should blush for very shame to be seen laced tight, just as she should blush to be caught indulging impure desires. ”

“ Formed, perhaps, more than any other, to cherish and admire them, but led away by some errors that had fatally drawn me from virtue, it is you have brought me back, who have again made me feel all its charms. Would you impute, then, to criminality this new affection? Will you blame your own work? Would you reproach yourself the interest you ought to take in it?—How can you dread so virtuous a sentiment, and what happiness can be greater than to experience it?
My affection frightens you. You think it too violent, too immoderate; qualify it, then, by a softer passion. ”

“ Tell me, how have I deserved this afflicting rigour? I am not afraid even to appeal to yourself: what have I done, but yielded to an involuntary sensation, inspired by beauty, and justified by virtue, always kept within due limits by respect, the innocent avowal of which proceeded from hopeless confidence? and will you betray that confidence that you seemed to countenance, and to which I unreservedly gave way? No, I will not believe it; that would be supposing you capable of an injustice, and I never can entertain, even for a moment, such an idea: I recant my reproaches ”

“ I feel that, to be bold enough to declare my sentiments, I have need of indulgence; did I but wish to justify them, it would be useless to me. What am I about to do, after all, save to show you your handiwork? And what have I to tell you, that my eyes, my embarrassment, my conduct and even my silence have not told you already? And why should you take offence at a sentiment to which you have given birth? Emanating from you, it is worthy to be offered to you; if it is ardent as my soul, it is pure as your own. ”

“ Uncleanness and lasciviousness are companions of the more specific impurity. The former is the general quality of this class of evils, and includes whatever is contaminating in word or look, in gesture or in dress, in thought or sentiment. "Lasciviousness" is uncleanness open and shameless. The filthy jest, the ogling glance, the debauched and sensual face, these tell their own tale; they speak of a soul that has rolled in corruption till respect for virtue has died out of it. In this direction "the works of the flesh" can go no further. A lascivious human creature is loathsomeness itself. ”

“ But it appears to include both cognitions of organic sensations and perceptions of states of the body, of which the enjoyment is certainly an evil in itself. So far as these are concerned, lasciviousness would, then, include in its essence an admiring contemplation of what is ugly. But certainly one of its commonest ingredients, in its worst forms, is an enjoyment of the same state of mind in other people: and in this case it would therefore also include a love of what is evil. With regard to cruelty, it is easy to see an enjoyment of pain in other people as essential to it ”

“ I had placed my happiness in paying to your virtues, as well as your charms, a pure and undiscoverable homage. But, incapable of deceit, with such an example of candour before me, I will not have to reproach myself with any vile dissimulation. Imagine not that I dare offend you by a criminal presumption. I know I shall be miserable; but I shall cherish my sufferings: they are the proofs of the ardour of my love:—at your feet, in your bosom, I will deposit my grievances; there will I gather strength to bear up against new sufferings ”

“ Would you, in short, by a rigour so undeserved, force me to believe that I had needed but to deceive you in order to obtain greater indulgence?
I do not repent of a conduct which I owed you, as I owed it to myself; but by what fatality does each praiseworthy action of mine become the signal for a fresh misfortune? ”

“ Everything seems to enhance my transports; the air I breathe is laden with pleasure; the very table upon which I write to you, consecrated for the first time to this office, becomes love’s sacred altar to me; how much it will be beautified in my eyes! I shall have traced upon it the vow to love you for ever! Pardon, I beseech you, the disorder of my senses. Perhaps, I ought to abandon myself less to transports which you do not share: I must leave you for a moment to dispel an intoxication which increases each moment, and which becomes stronger than myself. ”

“ Conditions were attached to it: you have kept no one of them; and your correspondence has been of such a kind that each one of your letters made it my duty not to reply to you. It was at the very moment when your obstinacy was forcing me to send you away from me that, by a perhaps culpable condescension, I attempted the only means which could permit me to be concerned with you: but what value has virtuous sentiment in your eyes? Friendship you despise; and, in your mad intoxication, counting shame and misery for naught, you seek only for pleasures and for victims. ”

“ Would it not be debasing maternal authority, nay even annihilating it, to make it subservient to a frivolous inclination, whose illusive power is felt only by those that dread it, and immediately vanishes when contemptuously treated? For my part, I must own I never believed in those irresistible, impetuous passions, which one would imagine the world has adopted, as an universal excuse for their irregularities. I cannot conceive how a passion, that one moment creates, and the next destroys, can overpower the unalterable principles of chastity, decency and modesty ”

“ For the lassie made me marvel with the aptness of her speech, and ashamed with her plain saying of things that I had hardly named within myself.
'Ah,' she said gently and wisely, 'the thoughts of a lass when a lad comes courting her, are more than she tells with her mouth. For many a kiss is honey-sweet on the lips, but bitter as gall in the heart. ”

“ It is an ambiguous term, but none the less suitable on that account, for laxity in its original sense implies a looseness which conduces to comfort, while, in its later and ethical use, it stands for irregularity, extravagance and eccentricity. Both meanings are richly exemplified in the fashions which prevailed in the years 1892-1914; but it must be admitted that, on the score of a wise laxity, man was more "rational" than woman in endeavouring to reconcile the claims of comfort and adornment. ”

“ The life I lead here is really fatiguing, from the excess of its repose and its insipid monotony. Reading your letter and the details of your charming day, I was tempted a score of times to invent some business, to fly to your feet, and beg of you an infidelity, in my favour, to your Chevalier, who, after all, does not merit his happiness. Do you know that you have made me jealous of him? Why talk to me of an eternal rupture? I abjure that vow, uttered in a moment of frenzy: we should not have been worthy to make it, had we meant to keep it. ”

“ This cool perfection of manner, this almost uncanny power of taking care of oneself seemed to give the lie almost as plainly to the Laxton solicitor’s daughter as it did to the butler and the lady’s maid. What was a girl of this sort doing in this galley? He was not altogether a fool, even if she treated him like one. Her arrogance was boundless, it simply asked for punishment, but at this tantalizing moment he realized ruefully that it called for heavier metal than George Norris to administer it. ”

“ Reflect, Madam, that I am earnest to obey you, even at the expence of my happiness; I will go farther, notwithstanding my conviction, that you only wish my absence to rid you of the painful sight of the victim of your injustice.
Be ingenuous, Madam; you dread less the public censure, too long used to reverence you, to dare to harbour a disadvantageous opinion of you, than to be made uneasy by the presence of a man, whom it is easier to punish than to blame. You banish me on the same principle that people turn their eyes from the miserable wretches they do not choose to relieve. ”

“ One does not condemn a culprit without naming his accusers. I ask no other favour, and I promise in advance to justify myself, and to force them to retract.
If I have, perhaps, too much despised the vain clamours of a public of which I make so little case, it is not thus with your esteem; and when I devote my life to meriting that, I shall not let it be ravished from me with impunity. It becomes all the more precious to me, in that I shall owe to it doubtless that request which you fear to make me, and which would give me, you say, rights to your [100] gratitude. ”

“ Being accustomed to inspire only becoming sentiments, and habituated only to conversations that I might attend to without a blush, and consequently to possess a degree of confidence, which, I flatter myself, I have a right to, I am a stranger to dissimulation, and know not how to suppress the sensations which I experience. The astonishment and confusion your behaviour threw me into, an unaccountable dread, from a situation not at all suited to me, and perhaps the shocking thought of seeing myself confounded with the women you despise, and treated with the same levity ”

“ How could she rise when the cruel hand of disgrace was ever ready to drag her down at any moment. “Ah, God!” she moaned in her misery, “if we could only be born without kin—with no one to disgrace us but ourselves! It’s cruel, God, it’s cruel to suffer for the crimes of others!” ”

“ Every great military school has recognized this. Laxness in the care of one's room may mean the habit of laxness in other and more important ways. Disorderliness indicates a certain tendency in character, and if a girl allows that sort of thing to go on she is very likely to show it in other ways. Untidiness in any of one's personal habits—and what could be more personal than a room?—should be taken up and corrected even as one attempts to correct any weak point in one's character. ”

“ But if it desires an unlawful object, although it be moderate, yet it is a great vice. Therefore it is not a disease to be angry, nor to desire, nor to be excited by lust; but to be passionate, to be covetous or licentious, is a disease. ”

“ Under these circumstances, there has arisen in society a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some [pg 283] respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed, for the most part, to disease and abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every age as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and the sinfulness of man. ”

“ Her manner made plain to him that she held some mysterious power over him, a power which she valued, even enjoyed, and he was nettled, baffled, and afflicted with a deep rage against her because of it. Dealing with a man he would have known what to do, but he felt strangely impotent in the presence of this girl, for she was not disturbed over his insults, and her quiet, direct glances affected him with a queer sensation of guilt, even embarrassed him. ”