079 Flirting

Flirting The ostensible object of courtship is the choice of a companion. For no other object should any intercourse having the appearance of courtship be permitted or indulged in. It is a species of high-handed fraud upon an unsuspecting heart, worthy of the heaviest penalty of public opinion, or law. The affections are too tender and sacred to be trifled with. Pie who does it is a wretch. He should be ranked among t,hieves, robbers, villains, and murderers. He who steals money steals trash; but he who steals affections without a return of similar affections steals that which is dearer than life and more precious than wealth. His theft is a robbery of the heart.

Flirting is a horrid outrage upon the most holy and exalted feelings of the human soul, and the most sacred and important relation of life. It is a vulgarism and wickedness to be compared only to blasphemy. It had, and still has, its origin in the basest lust. The refined soul is always disgusted with it. It is awfully demoral­izing in its tendency, and low and base in its character. It is true, many bandy their low jokes upon this matter in thoughtlessness; but if they would take one moment’s sober reflection upon it, they would see the impropriety of jesting about the most delicate, serious, and sacred feelings and relations in human existence. The whole tendency of such lightness is to cause the marriage relation to be lightly esteemed, and courtship to be made a round of low fun and frolic, in which every species of deception is endeavored to be played off. Until it is viewed in its true light, in that sober earnest­ness which the subject demands, how can courtship be anything else than a grand game of hypocrisy, result­ing in wickedness and misery the most ruinous and deplorable ?

There is much trifling courting among the young in some portions of the country that results in such calamitous consequences; carried on sometimes when the young man means nothing but present pleasure, and sometimes when the young woman has no other object in view. Such intercourse is confined mostly to young better things, are culpably criminal on these points, is no excuse for your shortcomings. That woman is often injured, or wronged, through her holiest feelings, adds but a blacker dye to your meanness. One rule is always safe: Treat every tvoman you meet as you would wish another man to treat your innocent, confiding sister.