{illust. caption = Mrs. Nation is sitting where she stood at her first marriage in the parlor of her old home in Cass county, Missouri.}

My father and mother warned me that the doctor was addicted to drink, but I had no idea of the curse of rum.  I did not fear anything, for I was in love, and doubted in him nothing.  When Dr. Gloyd came up to marry me the 21st of November, 1867, I noticed with pain, that his countenance was not bright, he was changed.  The day was one of the gloomiest I ever saw, a mist fell, and not a ray of sunshine.  I felt a foreboding on the day I had looked forward to, as being one of the happiest.  I did not find Dr. Gloyd the lover I expected.  He was kind but seemed to want to be away from me; used to sit and read, when I was so hungry for his caresses and love.  I have heard that this is the experience of many other young married women.  They are so disappointed that their husbands change so after marriage.  With my observation and experience I believe that men have it in their power to keep the love of ninety-nine women out of a hundred.  Why do women lose love for their husbands?  I find it is mostly due to indifference on the part of the husband.  I often hear the experience of those poor abandoned sisters.  I ask, Why are you in this house of sin and death?  When I can get their confidence, many of them say:  “I married a man; he drank, and went with other women.  I got discouraged or spiteful, and went to the bad also.”  I find that drink causes so much enmity between the sexes.  Drinking men neglect their wives.  Their wives become jealous.  Men often go with abandoned women under the influence of that drink that animates the animal passions and asks not for the association of love, but the gratification of lust.  Men do not go to the houses of ill-fame to meet women they love but oftener those they almost hate.  The drink habit destroys in men the appreciation of a home life, and when a woman leaves all others for one man, she does, and should, expect his companionship, and is not satisfied without it.  Libertines, taking advantage of this, select women whose husbands are neglectful, and he wins victims by his attentions, and poor woman, as at the first, is beguiled.  Marriage, while it is the blissful consummation of pure love, is the most serious of all relations, and girls and boys should early be instructed about the secrets of their own natures, the object of marriage, and the serious results of any marriage where true love is not the object.  I confess myself that I was not fit to marry with the ignorance of its holy purpose.  Sunday school teachers, mothers, fathers, and ministers, look into God’s word and see the results of sin.  God has written of this so as to force you to educate your children.  Talk freely.  Truth will purify everything it comes in contact with.  Ignorance is not innocence, but is the promoter of crime:  “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”