195. Hints For Husbands

You can hardly imagine how refreshing it is to occasionally call up the recollection of your courting days. How tediously the hours rolled away prior to the appointed time of meeting; how swift they seemed to fly, when met; how fond was the first greeting;how tender the last embrace;how fervent were your vows; how vivid your dreams of future happiness, when, returning to your home, you felt yourself secure in the confessed love of the object of your warm affections. Is your dream realized ? - are you so happy as you expected ? Why not ? Consider whether as a husband you are as fervent and constant as you were when a lover. Remember that the wife's claims to your unremitting regard - great before marriage, are now exalted to a much higher degree. She has left the world for you - home of her childhood, the fireside of her parents, their watchful care and sweet intercourse have all been yielded up for you. Look then most jealously upon all that may tend to attract you from home, and to weaken that union upon which your temporal happiness mainly depends; and believe that in the solemn relationship of husband is to be found one of the best guarantees for man's honour and happiness.

196. Hints For Wives

Perchance you think that your husband's disposition is much changed;that he is no longer the sweet-tempered, ardent lover he used to be. This may be a mistake. Consider his struggles with the world - his everlasting race with the busy competition of trade. What is it makes him so eager in the pursuit of gain - so energetic by day, so sleepless by night - but his love of home, wife, and children, and a dread that their respectability, according to the light in which he has conceived it, may be encroached upon by the strife of existence. This is the time secret of that silent care which preys upon the hearts of many men;and true it is, that when love is least apparent, it is nevertheless the active principle which animates the heart, though fears and disappointments make up a cloud which obscures the warmer element. As Above the clouds there is glorious sunshine, while below are showers and gloom, so with the conduct of man - behind the gloom of anxiety is a bright fountain of high and noble feeling. Think of this in those moments when clouds seem to lower upon your domestic peace, and by tempering your conduct accordingly, the gloom will soon pass away, and warmth and brightness take its place.

197. Hints For Husbands

Sum-mer is the season of love! Happy birds mate, and sing among the trees;fishes dart athwart the running streams, and leap from their element in resistless ecstacy;cattle group in peaceful nooks, by cooling streams;even the flowers seem to love as they twine their tender arms around each other, and throw their wild tresses about in beautiful profusion; the happy swain sits with his loved and loving mistress beneath the sheltering oak, whose arms spread out, as if to shield and sanctify their pure attachment. What shall the husband do now, when earth and heaven seem to meet in happy union ? Must he still pore over the calculations of the counting-house, or ceaselessly pursue the toils of the work-room - sparing no moment to taste the joys which Heaven measures out so liberally? No! "Come, dear wife, let us once more breathe the fresh air of heaven, and look upon the beauties of earth. The summers are few we may dwell together; we will not give them all to Mammon. Again let our hearts glow with emotions of renewed love - our feet shall again tread the green sward, and the music of the rustling trees shall mingle in our whisperings of love!"