Love and Happiness - The Crowning Joy of Life - When the Great Trial Comes - Sorrow that

Binds Two Hearts More Firmly

Life can be a stream of perfect happiness and love where two beings are in unity the one with the other. A woman finds herself the queen of her own kingdom - a devoted husband is her constant companion - her little home a veritable bower of peace.

One day, fairest of all days, she clasps her own child to her heart. The mystery of life is here - that glorious mystery and beauty of motherhood. It has been a dream for months, a dream which has now become a reality, and from some hidden spring flows such wonderful love, of which even she herself had no previous knowledge.

The Mystery Of Life

As the child lies in her adoring arms her ambitions fade away like a gossamer cloud, only to return on great billows of sapphire and gold like the summer sky at the hour of sunset - her ambitions for self have become ambitions for the sleeping child nestling so peacefully against her bosom.

To the man the child means new life. From the first day of his birth he begins to map out a career for this son of his. Do you see her happily stitching away in the glow of the firelight? The door is always ajar after six o'clock in the evening nowadays. How delightfully suggestive is that door ajar. The man comes into the house on tiptoe. "Is he asleep?" he asks in an exaggerated whisper, and the happy little wife nods, and for one brief instant the man takes her in his arms - for he is still the lover. Upstairs he goes, so quietly, so gently - for with his responsibilities has come a tenderness almost as gentle as the tenderness of a woman, and yet it does not detract from his manliness; it adds to his manhood.

When The Trials Come

A few days later he is hard at work; the telegraph boy comes in, and the man rips open the thin, ominous-coloured envelope. Quite suddenly an icy hand seems to clutch his heart. The words seem to burn themselves into his brain: "Come home at once - the boy ill." A taxicab to the station - no train for fifteen minutes - fifteen minutes are an eternity! He is seven miles from home. He flings himself recklessly into another taxicab, and away he rushes, homeward, to his wife and to the boy. The boy on whom all his ambitions are centred. He enters hurriedly - the house is horribly quiet. A doctor meets him in the narrow hall.

"I am sorry - we did all that we could." The man puts his hand to his head, he feels that he has become a stone. He walks mechanically into the room. The room that had been his heaven is now his hell! A woman is clasping something in her arms - her eves are wild, her face is ashen. "Jack

. . . oh, Jack, my baby! My darling!" His agony for one brief instant is forgotten at the sight of this heart-broken woman, who so few hours ago was one of the happiest beings on God's earth. . .

The next few days are a hideous nightmare. There is one particular day which brings unspeakable memories of torture - the return to the house, now so empty with an unearthly emptiness. The man forgets himself in his anxiety for this silent woman, who is the wife of his bosom and who suddenly seems to have become a stranger. One tiny woolly shoe he presses passionately to his lips; for one brief instant he is tempted to put it in his pocket near to his heart. No - he puts it reverently aside, and this simple action denotes the wisest course to pursue. The belongings, the associations, with regard to the dear departed should not be turned into a shrine of perpetual sorrow.

When this first tragic note comes into the lives of men and women with all its overwhelming agony, there is no more selfish form of grief than that which makes a very luxury of sorrow. There are natures who unfortunately seem to delight in their grief - it is absorbing. They cherish their morbid emotion with jealous greed, and look upon those who would offer words of real comfort and advice as heartless monsters. Yet perhaps these very people feel the loss more acutely than the one who so persistently makes perpetual visits to that shrine - a shrine which in reality should be too sacred for daily visitation.

Its Lesson

The man as he pressed the little woolly shoe to his lips felt that his hopes and ambitions were buried in that little flower-laden spot under the glowing tree of green. Yet as he looked up and saw the woman the words "care for the living" seemed to spring to life in letters of gold. From that moment he tried to obliterate self. That canker at his heart was just as keen when he took the woman to his heart and said, "We must be brave, little woman, for his sake" - and she for the first time read the unspeakable grief in the eyes of the man.

But a woman who has tasted of this exceeding bitter fruit of sorrow may say: "But I do not want happiness - happiness has passed away, and I have no desire for its return." But what about her duty to her husband - to her fellow-creatures? Has she no responsibilities with regard to them? Overwhelming as it may be, "the first sorrow" must become a pearl in the chain of love - a purifier - and angel - even though it be an "angel of pain." The heart must be opened - not closed, and the balm will then come bringing comfort and peace.