Meanwhile we will proceed to examine the last cause for
the setting of the honeymoon and the rising of the Red-moon.
There is in life one principle more potent than life itself. It is a
movement whose celerity springs from an unknown motive power. Man is
no more acquainted with the secret of this revolution than the earth
is aware of that which causes her rotation. A certain something, which
I gladly call the current of life, bears along our choicest thoughts,
makes use of most people's will and carries us on in spite of
ourselves. Thus, a man of common-sense, who never fails to pay his
bills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death,
or what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a
certain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up
between the four planks of his coffin, after having said every
evening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are we
to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do
men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest
wills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possess
this faculty in the highest degree yield to its fascination.
Every one can recognize the operation of this influence in the case of
his neighbor, and it is one of the things which exclude the majority
of husbands from the honeymoon.
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