The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. NationNation, Carry Amelia
History
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
Nation, Carry Amelia
Nation, Carry Amelia, 1846-1911; Social reformers -- United States -- Biography; Temperance -- United States
My father and mother warned me that the doctor was addicted to
drink, but I had no idea of the curse of rum. I did not fear anything, for I
was in love, and doubted in him nothing. When Dr. Gloyd came up to
marry me the 21st of November, 1867, I noticed with pain, that his countenance
was not bright, he was changed. The day was one of the gloomiest
I ever saw, a mist fell, and not a ray of sunshine. I felt a foreboding
on the day I had looked forward to, as being one of the happiest. I did not
find Dr. Gloyd the lover I expected. He was kind but seemed to want to
be away from me; used to sit and read, when I was so hungry for his
caresses and love. I have heard that this is the experience of many other
young married women. They are so disappointed that their husbands
change so after marriage. With my observation and experience I believe
that men have it in their power to keep the love of ninety-nine women out
of a hundred. Why do women lose love for their husbands? I find it is
mostly due to indifference on the part of the husband. I often hear the
experience of those poor abandoned sisters. I ask, Why are you in this house
of sin and death? When I can get their confidence, many of them say: "I
married a man; he drank, and went with other women. I got discouraged
or spiteful, and went to the bad also." I find that drink causes so much
enmity between the sexes. Drinking men neglect their wives. Their wives
become jealous. Men often go with abandoned women under the influence
of that drink that animates the animal passions and asks not for the
association of love, but the gratification of lust. Men do not go to the
houses of ill-fame to meet women they love but oftener those they almost hate.
The drink habit destroys in men the appreciation of a home life, and when a
woman leaves all others for one man, she does, and should, expect his
companionship, and is not satisfied without it. Libertines, taking advantage
of this, select women whose husbands are neglectful, and he wins victims
by his attentions, and poor woman, as at the first, is beguiled. Marriage,
while it is the blissful consummation of pure love, is the most serious of
all relations, and girls and boys should early be instructed about the secrets
of their own natures, the object of marriage, and the serious results of any
marriage where true love is not the object. I confess myself that I
was not fit to marry with the ignorance of its holy purpose. Sunday school
teachers, mothers, fathers, and ministers, look into God's word and see the
results of sin. God has written of this so as to force you to educate your
children. Talk freely. Truth will purify everything it comes in contact
with. Ignorance is not innocence, but is the promoter of crime: "My
people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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