Thus, after
indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is
laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the
laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of
our minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A
single point still claims our observation, and that is the first
onslaught of the evil we are confronting.
We reach this first question on approaching the high problems
suggested by the honeymoon; and although we find here the starting
point of all the phenomena of married life, it appears to us to be the
brilliant link round which are clustered all our observations, our
axioms, our problems, which have been scattered deliberately among the
wise quips which our loquacious meditations retail. The honeymoon
would seem to be, if we may use the expression, the apogee of that
analysis to which we must apply ourselves, before engaging in battle
our two imaginary champions.
The expression _honeymoon_ is an Anglicism, which has become an idiom
in all languages, so gracefully does it depict the nuptial season
which is so fugitive, and during which life is nothing but sweetness
and rapture; the expression survives as illusions and errors survive,
for it contains the most odious of falsehoods.
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