Marriages are said to be made in heaven. No, oh no! There may be a world of difference between the two who are joined together; and marriage is a sphere for heroism on that very account. What tragedies! What wondrous lives! The story of Daniel in the lion’s den, and of the four in the burning furnace, are typical of the angelic virtues that are found in women that walk in the very midst of hell for years and lives. I cannot conceive of any life so horrible as that of a pure, high-minded woman, a virtuous and aspiring soul, allied to trickery, to lying, to all lecherous vices, to drunkenness and the worst forms of animalism.
To sleep with swine, to nestle with serpents, to be with loathsome insects that gnaw and sting, is bad enough; but to be with them altogether in the shape of a man is hideous beyond conception. Dante, in his vision, never saw anything worse than that which exists in some married lives.—BEECHER.