Every thoughtful and observant minister of religion is
troubled by the determination of his flock to regard marriage as a
sanctuary for pleasure, seeing as he does that the known
libertines of his parish are visibly suffering much less from
intemperance than many of the married people who stigmatize them
as monsters of vice.
A FORGOTTEN CONFERENCE OF MARRIED MEN
The late Hugh Price Hughes, an eminent Methodist divine, once
organized in London a conference of respectable men to consider
the subject. Nothing came of it (nor indeed could have come of it
in the absence of women); but it had its value as giving the young
sociologists present, of whom I was one, an authentic notion of
what a picked audience of respectable men understood by married
life. It was certainly a staggering revelation. Peter the Great
would have been shocked; Byron would have been horrified; Don Juan
would have fled from the conference into a monastery. The
respectable men all regarded the marriage ceremony as a rite which
absolved them from the laws of health and temperance; inaugurated
a life-long honeymoon; and placed their pleasures on exactly the
same footing as their prayers. It seemed entirely proper and
natural to them that out of every twenty-four hours of their lives
they should pass eight shut up in one room with their wives alone,
and this, not birdlike, for the mating season, but all the year
round and every year.
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