he can never commence to sing except with bent head and beseeching hand that her blessing may bring some interchange of grace, some splendor that was once her thought, some benediction that was once her smile. And he can never conclude his song without reaching his hand and head up to her, yearning for hope, sustainment and reward. And in his "Prospice," his "Look Forward" into the future life, after the sharp pangs of soul-severance from the body, he says, his first experience will be a "peace out of pain," Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, As far as outsiders can judge the marriage of the Brownings was a perfect one-they were suited to each other, physically, mentally and spiritually. What is it that constitutes this perfection of love? What makes the really "happy," "satisfied" lover? That it rests in the physical, alone, no intelligent person believes, because in reality love is always mental or spiritual. Yet to deny the expression of human love through physical manifestation in its varied forms is as absurd as to deny the fact that only through the physical, as we at present understand it, is the human race perpetuated. There is a wide gulf between lust and license and the loyal love of wedlock in all its expressions. The Catholic Church denies the exercise of human love in marriage to its priests and nuns, claiming that only by a complete suppression of such love can a man or a woman be completely devoted to the church. The Puritan element in all religions has eyed physical love askance, and had it not been essential for race perpetuation, would have advocated its abolishment. The Shakers and the Esoteric brotherhood (the latter located at Applegate, California), disbelieve in all physical manifestations of affection, and the sincerity, earnestness and purity of all these advocates of a sexless life no honest person can doubt or question. There are other religious bodies and individuals who frown upon sex-love and deem it the greatest source of sin, sorrow, and misery in the world. This love must be a type of something in the Divine mind, a shadow of something spiritual, God-approved, because God-created. It is universal. There is nothing free from its influence and all physical life is dependent upon it for continuance. Hence in human beings, it must be designed for a beneficent purpose, which can result only from deep mental and spiritual attachment and oneness. Only those who understand this relationship aright can truly sing the joyous songs of happy lovers. And those who do, how happy they are, and how beautiful their songs. I am privileged to know a doctor and his wife who for twenty years or more have lived as happy lovers. When he visits his patients she accompanies him in the automobile, and sits outside; they spend what evenings they can together; neither cares to go out without the other; all their friends are mutual; she is a writer and he is a great admirer of what she does; physically, mentally, spiritually they are happy lovers, and their quiet and sweet songs are heard (spiritually) by all who know them. Let no I would say let people marry young. selfish consideration as to money, place, power, stifle the response to the Divine Song in the young heart. And so long as the one you love lives you will find it the easiest of all songs to sing. Is there any sweeter music than the voices of lovers heard in the early days of "love's young dream ?" Even their footsteps have a rich music, one for the other, when the heart is bubbling up with love. A letter often brings ecstasy, and words take on a new meaning when written by the hands of love. The man joys in working for the woman, the girl, he loves; and the woman joys in preparing food, caring for the raiment and attending to the many personal needs of the man she loves. These are small, but sure, tests of the right kind of love, and happy are those people who live the love-life all their days. They surely go Singing through Life with God. CHAPTER XII THE BEAUTIFUL SONGS OF HOME IN all the unrest that we find in the world today we should never forget that, with love and mutual forbearance, a man and a woman may build up a heaven on earth in their own home. Here, together, the world and its problems can be shut out-as far as is patriotic, wise, and advisable. Love can reign supreme. Tender, gentle helpfulness, deep sympathy, human oneness may assert themselves, and hearts minds and bodies be soothed to rest, encouraged to a more brave and manly fight with discouragements, and stimulated to a nobler conception of life. John Howard Payne felt in his inner heart the significance of the word "home," and it is well that we do not forget his divinely inspired song: 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, There's no place like home! An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain, Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again! The birds singing gaily that came at my call; Give me them, with the peace of mind dearer than all. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home! In the home there should be no problem as to who is the head of the household? Let it be a dual monarchy-or, better still, let it be a genuine republic, with some one in charge, each filled with loving confidence that the other is doing the best he, she, knows how, and working for the common good. In one beautiful home where I used to visit, where there were several children, the father was the unquestioned head, but he never referred to his wife save as "The Queen," and his deference to her opinion was as beautiful as it was wise. The boys and girls were thus brought up from their earliest years to recognize, to the full, the authority, the dignity, of the mother, and to pay her the same respect and honor as they gave to their father. The Episcopal Church is now in the throes of determining whether it shall eliminate the word "obey" in the woman's portion of the marriage ceremony. The church is a couple of generations behind the times. No man of sense wants the woman to obey, any more than a woman of sense wants a man to obey. The obligations of the home are mutual. There is no lording it one over the other, as in the olden time. Those days are gone by, never to return. Woman is just as important, and in one sense, even more important, in the home, than the man. It may be that he is the bread-winner, but the mere earning of money is a small and inconsequential business compared with that of properly spending it, keeping |