“Of the indifference to truth in the lower class of our papers, their vulgarity, intrusions into private life, and eagerness at all hazards to print something startling, I say little, because these characteristics are widely known and deplored. It apparently did not occur to any of my abusers to look up the evidence of my folly. I dare say it was the very unlikelihood of the tale which gave it currency. I was in general known to be a quiet person, with no liking for notoriety, a teacher of one of the gravest subjects in a dignified university. I had just published a largely circulated biography, presenting an exalted ideal of marriage. It struck the press of the country as a diverting thing to reverse all this in a day, to picture me as favoring loose relations of the sexes, and to attribute to me buffoonery from which every decent man recoils. “Again, our people seem growing incapable of taking a joke--or rather of taking anything else. The line which parts lightness from reality is becoming blurred. My lively remark has served as the subject for portentous sermonizing, while the earnest appeal made later in my address to look upon marriage seriously, as that which gives life its best meaning, has been either passed by in silence or mentioned as giving additional point to my nonsense. The passion for facetiousness is taking the heart out of our people and killing true merriment. The ‘funny column’ has so long used marriage and its accompaniments as a standing jest that it is becoming difficult to think of it in any other way, and the divorce court appears as merely the natural end of the comedy.