The Funny Side of Physic Part 102

LOVE.

"Well, what has that to do with health and long life?" ask the cynic, the bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.

Everything, I reply.

The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.

"That is a bold a.s.sertion," says my quizzer.

Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.

Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?

"G.o.d is love." Here is the first, the fundamental principle.

He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,--to love all things which he has created. This is G.o.dlike. If you are not thus, you are like the unG.o.dly, who "shall not live out half their days." "Love G.o.d, and keep his commandments."

"Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command, than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is undefinable.

"There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.

Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of autumn.

I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.

Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.

And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?

Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?

Chaste, and looking up to G.o.d, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.

Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.

Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.

Love never grows old, love never perisheth."

AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.

Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and happiness.

To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.

You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation, or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny hand, and in pitiful tones says, "Please give me a penny, for G.o.d's sake."

O, give the child "love," for G.o.d's sake; for he so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.

Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.

The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.

Disguise or deny the truth of the a.s.sertion if you will, woman must love somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if she loves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other's, or a pet canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.

SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.

I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable.

Cheerfulness is the first step.

A very sensible writer in the _Phrenological Journal_ says,--

"There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades, and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well."

Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint and girlhood's influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving husbands and fathers.

What shall I say of those demoralizing inst.i.tutions where the "young ladies" are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such inst.i.tutions in our enlightened land? Yet there are; where the s.e.xes are denied not only the a.s.sociation with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where, if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to that inst.i.tution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.

I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook's novels of society, boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of the _safest_ in the world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high, surmounted by sharp spikes and broken gla.s.s bottles. I reckon all the virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.

FENCES BROKEN DOWN.

The writer pa.s.sed some time in a town where these discourtesies were promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male students boarded also. There was one cla.s.s of influences and _pa.s.sions_ pervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn.

And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a "right jolly good fellow," because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them; but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as an innocent amus.e.m.e.nt, I could stand, but the "accomplishments" referred to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often or seldom revealed in those who customarily a.s.sociate in pure female society? They had little or no respect for the opposite s.e.x. Their ideas of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at night, when "Old Prof." was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of purity than any other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.

And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man, drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord a.s.sured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump little miss, who he knew "had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking a ride with a gentleman scholar."

The scholars all met in the "chapel" for prayers. Are sly glances, winks, or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.

Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.

And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?

Bring the s.e.xes up together. Teach them together, as much as is consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by the plan of a separate education.

We all dread to grow old. Don't talk of second childhood. Keep the first youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing this desirable state. Says the _Phrenological Journal_, beauty comes and goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features depends on youthfulness of feeling.

"Spring still makes spring in the mind, When sixty years are told; Love wakes anew the throbbing heart, And we are never old."