The Wife | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 23.

The Wife.

ONLY let a woman be sure she is precious to her husband—not useful, not valuable, not convenient simply, but lovely and beloved; let her be the recipient of his polite and hearty attentions; let her feel that her cares and love are noticed, appreciated, and returned; let her opinion be asked, her approval sought, and her judgment respected in matters of which she is cognizant; in short, let her only be loved, honored, and cherished, in fulfillment of the marriage vow, and she will be to her husband, her children, and society a well-spring of happiness. She will bear pain, and toil, and anxiety; for her husband's love to her is a tower and fortress. Shielded and sheltered therein, adversity will have lost its sting. She may suffer, but sympathy will dull the edge of sorrow.

A house with love in it—and by love I mean love expressed in words, and looks, and deeds, for I have not one spark of faith in love that never crops out—is to a house without love as a person to a machine; one is life, the other is mechanism. The unloved woman may have bread just as light, a house just as tidy as the other; but the latter has a spring of beauty about her, a joyousness, a penetrating and pervading brightness to which the former is an entire stranger. The deep happiness of her heart shines out in her face. Her home is ever airy, and graceful, and warm, and welcoming with her presence. She is full of devices, and plots, and sweet surprises for her husband and family. She has never done with the romances and poetry of life. She herself is a lyric poem, setting herself to all pure and gracious melodies. Humble household ways and duties have for her a golden significance.—Work at Home.