p. 8 | A Wife's Soft Answer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 8, 1910

A Wife's Soft Answer

“We were married thirty-seven years,” said Mr. Gardiner Andrews, “and in all that time my wife never gave me a cross word. But I shall never forget the first time I chided her. It was on a Sabbath morning, when we had been married about two years. I found a button off my shirt, and threw it across the room.

“‘Sew a button on,’ I said in a brutal voice. She was a good Christian woman, and she got a button and sewed it on.”

“And what did she say?” asked a little, bristling woman, with snapping eyes.

“She said, ‘Forgive me, husband; I had a great deal to do yesterday, and forgot it; but it shall never happen again.’”

“O,” said the man, fixing his eyes on the picture of his dear wife, “her gentle words almost broke my heart! I could have gone down on my knees to ask her forgiveness. She made a different man of me, and the world has been a different place since she died.”

There was silence as he finished speaking, interrupted by a general clearing of throats, and the little woman's snapping eyes looked suspiciously dim.—Selected.