THE MERCHANT'S WIFE by Anonymous

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Sep 23, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 37.

THE MERCHANT'S WIFE.

By Anonymous

MR. ROSE, a merchant, now residing in Philadelphia, who formerly lived in rather an extravagant style, was in the habit, every Monday morning, of giving his wife a certain sum of money for table and other household expenses of the week.

He never mentioned his business to his wife, and she, deeming him sufficiently capable of attending to his own affairs, never inquired into them. About fifteen years after their marriage, through some slight mismanagement and the rascality of his confidential clerk, Mr. Rose suddenly broke, and his fall was mentioned sympathizingly on 'Change, and—like all such matters—there sympathy ended.

The merchant kept the affair secret, and the first intimation his lady had of it was by a paragraph in a paper. Shortly after dinner was over, on the day of the discovery of the startling facts, Mrs. Rose desired her husband to remain in the parlor a few moments, as she had something to say to him. She then left the room and hurried upstairs and shortly afterwards returned with a splendidly bound Bible in her hand. Handing it to her husband, she said:—

"George, the day following our marriage you gave me this precious book, as a token of your love, and as a rich fountain to look to in the day of trouble. Its pages have been precious to me, and, as your brow looks sad to-day, I now return it to you, that you may glean from it some consolation in the hour of gloom."

She then left the room.

The merchant opened the book carelessly, and a bank bill fell out of it. He picked it up and glanced at its face—it was a $10 bill. He opened it at the first page and continued to find an X between every two leaves till he arrived at the commencement of the Book of Revelation. He was saved—could again commence business, and that, too, with a capital of $9,000.

He rang the bell. A servant appeared.

"Request your mistress to come to me immediately," said the merchant.

The lady obeyed, entering the room with something between a tear and a smile.

"Kate! Kate! where did you procure all this money?"

" 'Tis the weekly savings of our household expenses for the last fifteen years," was the modest reply. "Every week I put ten out of twenty dollars which you gave me into our Bible bank; that when a day of trouble came upon us, we should have something to save us from the wolf."

"But why put it in the Bible, Kate?"

"Because it is a good bank, and one which will not suddenly break," replied the lady. "It is a consolation in weal or wo, the friend to which we can always come and find comfort in distress; and it was a fancy of mine to place my savings in this Book of richer treasures, and to present it to you, that in looking for spiritual consolation, you might also find the means for your temporal relief."—Anonymous.