The Wedding Ring | Page 5

a bad
woman and unworthy of being your companion in a life charged with
such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.
TWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.
What you want, O man! in a wife, is not a butterfly of the sunshine, not
a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping gadabout, not a
mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as to where the
humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul, one that
cannot only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep. There
will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will both want
steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you! When your
fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in heaven, and
not charge upon you with a bitter, "I told you so." As far as I can
analyze it, sincerity and earnestness are the foundation of all worthy
wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to get that, and you get nothing
but what you will wish you never had got.
BEAUTY A BENEDICTION.
Don't make the mistake that the man of the text made in letting his eye
settle the question in which coolest judgment directed by divine
wisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his wifely choice
except a pretty face is like a man who should buy a farm because of the

dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty is a talent, and when God gives it
He intends it as a benediction upon a woman's face. When the good
Princess of Wales dismounted from the railtrain last summer, and I saw
her radiant face, I could understand what they told me the day before,
that, when at the great military hospital where are now the wounded
and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the Princess passed
through, all the sick were cheered at her coming, and those who could
be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from their stupor, would get up
on their elbows to look at her, and wan and wasted lips prayed an
audible prayer: "God bless the Princess of Wales! Doesn't she look
beautiful?"
But how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in a human countenance!
Explosion of a kerosene lamp turns it into scarification, and a scoundrel
with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will drive his chariot
wheels across that bright face, cutting it up in deep ruts and gullies. But
there is an eternal beauty on the face of some women, whom a rough
and ungallant world may criticise as homely; and though their features
may contradict all the laws of Lavater on physiognomy, yet they have
graces of soul that will keep them attractive for time and glorious
through all eternity.
There are two or three circumstances in which the plainest wife is a
queen of beauty to her husband, whatever her stature or profile. By
financial panic or betrayal of business partner, the man goes down, and
returning to his home that evening he says: "I am ruined; I am in
disgrace forever; I care not whether I live or die." It is an agitated story
he is telling in the household that winter night. He says: "The furniture
must go, the house must go, the social position must go," and from
being sought for obsequiously they must be cold-shouldered
everywhere. After he ceases talking, and the wife has heard all in
silence, she says: "Is that all? Why, you had nothing when I married
you, and you have only come back to where you started. If you think
that my happiness and that of the children depend on these trappings,
you do not know me, though we have lived together thirty years. God is
not dead, and the National Bank of Heaven has not suspended payment,
and if you don't mind, I don't care a cent. What little we need of food

and raiment the rest of our lives we can get, and I don't propose to sit
down and mope and groan. Mary, hand me that darning-needle. I
declare! I have forgotten to set the rising for those cakes!" And while
she is busy at it he hears her humming Newton's old hymn,
"To-Morrow:"
"It can bring with it nothing But He will bear us through; Who gives
the lilies clothing Will clothe His people too; Beneath the spreading
heavens No creature but is fed; And He who feeds the ravens Will give
His children bread.
"Though vine nor fig-tree either Their wonted fruit should bear,
Though all the fields should wither Nor flocks nor herds be there; Yet
God the same abiding, His praise shall tune my voice; For while in Him
confiding I cannot but rejoice."
The husband looks