HIS SECOND CHOICE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1880

HIS SECOND CHOICE.

"HESTER!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, ceasing her rocking and knitting, and sitting upright, "Do you know what your husband will do when you are dead!"

"What do you mean?" was the startled reply.

"He will go and marry the sweetest-tempered girl he can find."

"O auntie!" Hester began.

"Don't interrupt me till I have finished," said Aunt Susan, leaning back and taking up her knitting. "She may not be as pretty as you are, but she will be good-natured. She may not be as good a housekeeper as you are, in fact, I think she will not, but she will be good-natured. She may not even love him as well as you do, but she will be more good-natured."

"Why, auntie"—

"That isn't all," continued Aunt Susan. "Every day you live you are making your husband more and more in love with that good-natured woman who may take your place some day. After Mr. and Mrs. Harrison left you the other evening, the only remark made about them was, 'She is a sweet woman.'"

"Ah, auntie"—

"That isn't all," composedly resumed Aunt Susan. "To-day your husband was half across the kitchen floor bringing you the first ripe peaches, and all you did was to look up and say, 'There, Will, just see your muddy tracks on my clean floor. I won't have my clean floor all tracked up.' Some men would have thrown the peaches out of the window. One day you screwed up your face when he kissed you because his mustache was damp, and said, 'I never want you to kiss me again.' When he empties anything you tell him not to spill it; when he lifts anything you tell him not to break it. From morning till night your sharp voice is heard complaining and fault-finding. And last winter, when you were so sick, you scolded him for allowing the pump to freeze, and took no notice when he said, 'I was so anxious about you that I could not think of the pump.'"

"But, auntie"—

"Hearken, child. The strongest, most intellectual men of them all care more for a woman's tenderness than for anything else in this world, and without this the cleverest woman and the most perfect housekeeper is sure to lose her husband's affection in time. There may be a few more men like your Will, as gentle, as loving, and chivalrous, as forgetful of self, and so satisfied with loving that their affection will die a long struggling death; but in most cases it takes but a few years of fretfulness and fault-finding to turn a husband's love into irritated indifference."

"Well, auntie"—

"Yes, well! You are not dead yet, and that sweet-tempered woman has not been found; so you have time to become so serene and sweet that your husband can never imagine that there is a better tempered woman in existence.—Advocate and Guardian.