O the presence of women!
I swear, nothing is more exquisite to me than the presence of women,
The bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards.

For me the sweetheart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers—
How much happier one can be when there are good women around.
The women are wonderful friends,
What is there better than the friendship of a woman?
Nothing at all—nothing in this whole world.

I have been more than lucky in the women I have met. My best friends have been women. Oh, I have been fortunate in these—fortunate! fortunate! I don’t believe any man ever lived who was more fortunate in the friendship of good women. I don’t mean respectable women, so-called—I mean good women.

A woman is always heaven or hell to a man—mostly heaven,
She doesn’t spend much of her time on the borderlines.
To whom has been given the sweetest from women, and paid them in kind?
For I will take the like sweets and pay them in kind.

I am a man, attracting, at any time, her I but look upon, or touch with the tips of my fingers,
Or that touches my face, or leans against me—
The unspeakable love I interchange with women!
To talk to the perfect girl who understands me,
To waft to her these from my own lips,
To effuse them from my own body.

Once I pass’d through a populous city,
Now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who detain’d me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long been forgotten by me.

This gentle call is for you my love, for you,
Certain whispers of myself bequeathing,
Hark close and still what I now whisper to you, with my lips close to your ear,
With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you,
I sing your love, O faithful love,
I sing your gentle song,
I sing with tender tongue.

The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting,
Loud! loud! loud! loud I call to you, my love!
Here I am! Here!
Hither my love! surely you must know who is here,
You must know who I am, my love.
You and I—what the earth is, we are,
Fast-anchor’d eternal, O woman I love!
O you entirely possess me,
More resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!

Primeval my love for the woman I love,
The woman that loves me and whom I love more than my life.
O for happiness with my mate!
O bride! O divine wife! the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade.
I will go stay with her who waits for me,
The oath of the inseparableness of two together, that oath swearing.

My marriage is a full denial of him who would say there is no happiness on earth. Nothing in my life has brought me more comfort and support every way than the warm appreciation and friendship of that true, full-grown woman—a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire. My attachment was colored with an esteem and respect which made it indeed true love.
Love tamed me from my roughness. She was herself a woman of calm and voluptuous beauty—a being of peace and calmness—she whom I loved, and her influence brought into my temperament something of the same soothing qualities. Nothing has more spiritually soothed me; her very presence was soothing and pacifying.

The divine institution of the marriage tie—the races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage—lies at the root of the welfare, the safety, the very existence of every nation;
Where the happy young husband and wife are, and the happy old husband and wife are, will allure me—
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife,
The married couple sleeping calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
The hot kiss of the new husband to the bride and the kiss of the bride to the husband,
The chaste blessings of the well-married couple,
The shape of the roof over the well-married young man and woman,
The roof over the supper joyously cook’d by the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband,
(But it is just as becoming, when both understand it as, that the man cook for the woman as that the woman cook for the man.)

I am quite a lady’s man again in my old days. I am here at present times mainly in the midst of female women, some of them young and jolly, and meet them most every evening in company—and the way in which this aged party comes up to the scratch and cuts out the youthful parties and fills their hearts with envy is absolutely a caution. You would be astonished to see the brass and coolness, and the capacity of flirtation and carrying on with the girls—I would never have believed it of myself.
I went by invitation to a party of ladies and  gentlemen—mostly ladies. I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree. I talked too, indeed went in like a house afire. It was good exercise, for the fun of the thing. I also made love to the women, and flatter myself that I created at least one impression—wretch and gay deceiver that I am. I have already had three or four such parties here—which, you will certainly admit, considering my age and heft, to say nothing of my reputation, is doing pretty well.
Brought here by destiny, surrounded in this way—and as I in self-defense would modestly state, sought for, seized upon, and ravingly devoured by these creatures—and so nice and smart some of them are, and handsome too—there is nothing left for me, is there, but to go in. Of course, you understand, it is all on the square. My going in amounts to just talking and joking and having a devil of a jolly time, carrying on—that’s all. They are all as good girls as ever lived. Does me good to be with them all.

 NEXT: LOVE OF MEN

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