What Edgerly said about this book
"The information given in the following pages contains every possible means of assistance to men and women who need and want such aid, It COMPLETELY CHANGES MEN AND WOMAN. In Man it develops all that is noble, virile, and attractive. In Woman it develops all that is beautiful, sweet, lovable. It discovers temperamental unfitness. It proves that only one couple in twenty is temperamentally fitted to each other. Sex Magnetism is the only power that can make the true test. "
What it is really
Advice, variously sensible and strange, intended to help courting and married couples to get on better with each other.
Sample quotations
"If he is unworthy, like many of the sons of the idle rich, he will visit houses of prostitution long before he is fit for such uses, and his manhood will become beastly and degraded".
"Here is the case of a most estimable lady whose husband died quickly of acute indigestion due to her errors in food selection. Even that event did not take the stupid conceit out of her head. A year later a very dear friend died at her table of acute indigestion and that event did not deter her from her errors. Nothing could have the slightest influence on her mind. Recently a grown son has died at her table of acute indigestion, and still she cooks pies, pies, pies, and serves them and she cooks hot bread, hot rolls, hot muffins, and has them every day on her table."
"Every young man should pass a state of probation in marriage with some woman who is two generations older than himself." Moreover, "the greatest mistake that can be made by young men in their teens and in the twenties is to omit an interest in women who are much their seniors."
"The sun is the most energetic of all powers, and its energy is magnetism. It is able to hold all its planets away from it by the pushing power of its peculiar rays."
The above quote anticipates ideas later developed by the risible Walter C. Wright.
"The woman who wants to spend her evenings out with a lady friend should take her husband with her. The lady friend is too often a curable prostitute, so cleverly heralded as to divert all suspicion. Two women together in the evenings can hatch all sorts of mischief."
"Many a man has forced himself to love the dog of the woman he desires to marry; and then he awakens to the nausea of it all, after it may be too late".