case: the wedded pair love each other truly. Will this love last as long as life? Can it last so long? Are the husband and wife justified in swearing fidelity unto death? Are they not committing a foolhardy or inconsiderate act when they pledge themselves for the immutability of their transient sentiments? The poets, who seem to have been entrusted with the task of almost hopelessly confusing and mystifying this matter, do not hesitate an instant with the reply to my question. They are firmly convinced that true love lasts for aye. If love ends, it is not love, they say. Hm, that is very easily said, but how about the truth of it? Every one who has observed life with his eyes open, can give the poets a hundred examples of love that commenced very passionately and yet cooled off very rapidly and very thoroughly. If the poets say that love is not love which fades away in time, we must ask them how we are to distinguish between real love and the spurious article, as the latter at the moment of its conception and also, during its brief blossoming-time is so deceptively like the former, arousing the same sentiments, impelling to the same actions, with the same accompaniment of excitement and agitation, ecstacy and despair, tenderness and jealousy as the former? Certainly there have been cases in which love only ceased with life. A cool and impartial analyst would perhaps find, even in these cases that the perpetuity of love could be ascribed to favorable circumstances, to the power of habit, the accidental absence of any disturbances or temptations, in short, to influences entirely independent of the two individuals, fully as much at least, as to the quality of their sentiment. We can not deny either the existence of such cases. In them lifelong single matrimony is a true, natural and authorized condition. In them form and substance are one, and the outward, visible bond never
