and ravishing girls of Paradise, called, from their large black eyes, Hur-al Oyun, the enjoyment of whose company will be the principal felicity of the faithful. These, they say, are created not of clay, as mortal women are, but of pure musk, being, as the prophet often affirms in his Koran, free from all natural impurities, of the strictest modesty, and secluded from public view in pavilions of hollow pearls, so large that, as some traditions have it, one of them will be not less than sixty miles square." One of these pearls would suit the writer better than the women of musk! The Turks and Persians, as is well known, are mainly Mohammedans.

In the turnings and overturnings of nationalities and sects after the Christian era, there was a grand mixture of polygamy, polyandry, omnigamy, and monogamy. "Polygamy," remarks Mr. Norton, "seems not to have been entirely eradicated among the Christians of the sixth century, as we find it then enacted in the canons of one of their councils, that if any one is married to many wives, he shall do penance. Even the clergy themselves in this period practised bigamy, as we find it ordained at another council held at Narbonne, that such clergymen as were bigamists should only be presbyters and deacons, and should not be allowed to marry and conse crate."

"In the eighth century," says the same writer, "Charlemagne had two wives. Sigebert and Chilperic had also a plurality, according to Gregory of Tours. But we even find an instance of bigamy and polygamy as late as the sixteenth century. Philip, a German prince of Hesse Cassel, obtained permission from Luther and a synod of six Reformers, to marry a second wife during the life of his first one, and he accordingly did so. In this remarkable case Luther exercised an authority which even the most daring of the popes in the plenitude of his apostolic power had never ventured to attempt."

Again this writer remarks, "that the celebrated John of Leyden (a leader of the Anabaptists in Munster, Germany, in 1533) announced his right to marry as many wives as he chose, following the custom of the kings of Israel, and put it in practice so far as to marry seventeen."

Passing over the bigamy or polygamy of various dissolute kings of Europe, open polygamy had made no progress in the nations of Christendom till early in the present century, when Joseph Smith founded his religion, which he claims to be Christian, and based on the Bible as well as upon the book of Mormon, which he interpreted from the golden plates excavated from a hill in Ontario County, New York. As an account of him and his followers will be given in the succeeding chapter, I will omit here the story of Mormon polygamy.

The Mormons, however, were not the first to inaugurate polygamy on American soil. "It was," says Norton, "practised among the ancient

Mexicans and Peruvians, as well as the more barbarous tribes in both North and South America. Montezuma, the emperor of Mexico, at the time of the Spanish invasion had three thousand women. The Incas in the twelfth century married only their own sisters, but were allowed a great number of concubines. The Peruvians, before the coming of the Incas, are said to have had their women in common, with no recognized marriage relation, but subsequently adopted polygamy.

"The Brazilians practised polygamy in ancient times, and I believe now do in portions of their empire. In Nicaragua, polygamy was formerly allowed, and adulterers were simply divorced. In Carabani, caziques had as many wives as they wished, and, when they made long journeys, had them stationed along the road, like post-horses, for their convenience. The other inhabitants had as many wives as they could support. Polygamy, indeed, seems to have obtained among the ancient inhabitants of the whole of Central and South America, and, as a result, little adultery or violence was committed. The aborigines of North America, though generally content with one wife, sometimes took two or three. In conclusion," remarks this writer, "it is stated on good authority that, from the creation of the world, polygamy has been the rule with four-fifths of the human race."

History of Monogamy.

If the marriage institution of Greece, as originated by Cecrops, can be regarded as monogamic, then its adoption as a national institution dates back to fifteen hundred and fifty years before Christ; and if Grecian mar riage was monogamic, why may not that of the Egyptians also be regarded as such? Admitting Egyptian marriage to be monogamic, we are carried back some thirty-five hundred years before the Christian era in search of the age when this system of marriage commenced. riage of one man to one woman, with the license of concubinage, was doubtless one step out of polygamy, and another step toward monogamy, and in this light we must view the marriage of the ancient Egyptians and Grecians, instead of adopting it as legitimately belonging to the monogamic system.

The mar

Having placed the early Egyptian and Grecian marriages under the polygamic head, because of their concubinage, it may be said that monogamy originated in Italy between seven hundred and one thousand years before Christ, unless it can be shown that it was first practised by the barbarous tribes of Northern Europe. Traditions place its origin at least as far back as the foundation of Rome, seven hundred and fifty-three years before Christ. Monogamy, unquestionably, was originally the offspring of masculine poverty and female scarcity. The opulent polygamic tribes held the world's wealth, and bought up all the handsome women in those early

times in Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Europe. In Northern Europe, the climate was too inhospitable, and the soil too sterile, to favor the luxury and extravagance which polygamy engendered. Hence the northern tribes of barbarians, and the poor people of African, Asiatic, and Southern European civilization, were obliged to be content with one woman, while many a luckless scalawag (then as now) was compelled to pursue "life's thorny pathway," with only a "semi-occasional " glance at one, which momentary diversion rendered him liable to stumble into the inferential brier bushes aforesaid. It is presumable, that from the

agonized experience of one of those unfortunate bachelors, originated that

Fig. 156.

THE MONOGAMIC FAMILY.

trite adage, "There never was a rose without a thorn;" and to this day the removal of this thorn is one of the commonest feats of medicine and surgery.

The founders of Rome were poor, hard-working people; but industry produces its fruits, and, in a little while. we find in its traditions mention made of a rich as well as a poor class, known respect. ively by the designation-pa. trician and plebeian. At this early age of Roman civilization, the civil law had nothing to do with marriage; it was an affair of the family. Custom, rather than law, took charge of the function of family organization; but custom

was then, as it now is, an arbitrary ruler in all things it presumed to regulate. In the oldest form of Roman marriage, according to Paul Gide, the woman gave up all family ties on her side, on becoming a wife, and entered with all her effects into the family of her husband. After a time, there sprang up a party which opposed this absorption of the daughter and her property into the family of the husband, and custom began to allow the woman to remain at home after marriage, in consequence of which, her family was aggrandized by the industry and prosperity of the husband. For many generations these two customs co-existed, some abiding by the first, and others governing themselves by the latter one, and eventually the

former became extinct in all cases, excepting those wherein the woman was an heiress in her own right, or otherwise possessed of property belonging wholly to herself; a woman thus situated was allowed, if she chose, to become a member of the household to which her husband belonged.

When the wife remained at her father's house, she was mainly subject to his control. He could take her from the husband, punish her, or even tako her life. The husband, too, had the right to whip, kill, or sell her. When the will of the husband came in conflict with that of the father, the difficulty was submitted to a tribunal composed of the relatives of the parents and friends of the wife, and finally, if necessary, to the censor, who was a public functionary, acting under no rules of law, but simply upon principles of equity. Webster defines a censor as "an officer in ancient Rome, whose business was to register the effects of the citizens, to impose taxes according to the property which each man possessed, and to inspect the manners of the citizens, with power to censure vice and immorality by inflicting a public mark of ignominy on the offender."

In the original marriage customs of the Romans, when the wife went, with all her personal effects, to the house of the parents of the husband, her own father forfeited control, and she was also removed from the influence of her relatives. Neither her family nor the censor could interfere, excepting in cases of unjust chastisement or threatened repudiation. At the death of her husband, she was placed on a level with her children as an heir to the estate, sharing equally with each one of them, as if she were a sister rather than a mother.

Even at this early day, it was almost as necessary for every marriageable girl to have a dower as it is to-day, in France, for her to have her dot. She might, if she chose, before marriage, hire her services out for the purpose of acquiring a dower. Falling short of this in her girlhood, she was in many instances allowed to hire out after marriage, and the fruit of this labor constituted her dower, which belonged exclusively to herself.

46

was

It has often been said that there were no divorces in Rome for the first five hundred years of her national axistence. It is true that while her laws did not interfere with the liberty of divorce, it was forbidden by religion and by custom. "A man who repudiated his wife," remarks Gide, dishonored by the censor, and excommunicated by the priest; and the only way atonement could be made was by placing upon the altars of the divinities who presided at the union, a portion of the husband's goods. This moral penalty was more efficacious than the laws have ever been. Divorce was not illegal, but morally impossible, and," reiterating the common statement, this writer avers that, "according to all antique authors for five centuries, there was not a case of divorce." While this may be so, it is difficult to see how these antique authors can speak positively on this point, for,

according to this same writer, "under the republic of ancient times, a case of adultery and divorce was tried in the family to hide the shame." Now is Monsieur Gide, or any writer, prepared to demonstrate the supposed fact that no divorce occurred for five hundred years, when domestic discords were treated with the utmost privacy? It is certainly to be inferred from the last-quoted statement, that cases of divorce were tried; and the tribunal having been made up of the immediate family of the parties interested, with the possible intervention of the censor, is it not quite probable that occasional divorces did occur, all publicity of which was avoided, in obedience to the well-known sentiment of the people in favor of concealing matrimonial infidelity or disruption? The censor and priest, if kindly disposed to the families involved in trouble, could prevent a case from becoming public, and, of course, those pagan divinities of wood and stone, "who presided at the union," could at least be bribed to "keep mum !” Nevertheless, from all the light we are able to obtain concerning the early Romans, they were a pretty respectable people, or would have been, if they had treated the women as equals rather than as children, subject to the same discipline and punishment as the juvenile element of the household. [Query: If condign punishment was fashionable in those days, were the women spanked?] 'Never," remarks Paul Gide, "did the Christian legislators better define marriage than did the lawgivers of ancient Rome. It is," he says, according to the pronounced Roman idea, “the union of two lives, the joining of two patrimonies, the putting in common of all temporal and religious interests. This was in the first four centuries of Rome. In this ancient notion of marriage," continues this writer, "already appear the two principles which are the foundation of modern Christian marriages, the indissolubility of the marriage tie, and monogamy."

Under the republic, the Romans were a progressive people, for before its fall, we find, according to the language of Paul Gide, "woman was no longer powerless and oppressed; she was the matron, the mother of the family; respected by the slaves, children, her own husband, and cherished by all; mistress of her own house, and extending her influence outside to the heart of popular assemblies and councils of the senate; while allowed to go everywhere, her habitual place was at home; all treasures were under her care; she educated her children, and governed her family. The father was the lord of the household; the daughter had equal rights with the son; this was the first time in woman's history that we have discovered that she had any rights. Over her was a guardian whose authority only related to her property and not her person. She had the liberty to choose her own husband, guided by the advice of her parents or friends."

During this period the growth of the republic made her a neighbor to Greece, and she soon began to feel the influence of Grecian civilization. In