ess of all this haunts you like an accusing
spirit, and yet penetrates your heart with a new devotion toward the
loved one who is thus watchful of your comfort.

She is gentle,--keeping your love, as she has won it, by a thousand
nameless and modest virtues which radiate from her whole life and
action. She steals upon your affections like a summer wind breathing
softly over sleeping valleys. She gains a mastery over your sterner
nature by very contrast, and wins you unwittingly to her lightest wish.
And yet her wishes are guided by that delicate tact which avoids
conflict with your manly pride; she subdues by seeming to yield. By a
single soft word of appeal she robs your vexation of its anger; and,
with a slight touch of that fair hand, and one pleading look of that
earnest eye, she disarms your sternest pride.

She is kind,--shedding her kindness as heaven sheds dew. Who indeed
could doubt it?--least of all you, who are living on her kindness day by
day, as flowers live on light? There is none of that officious parade
which blunts the point of benevolence; but it tempers every action with
a blessing. If trouble has come upon you, she knows that her voice,
beguiling you into cheerfulness, will lay your fears; and as she draws
her chair beside you, she knows that the tender and confiding way with
which she takes your hand, and looks up into your earnest face, will
drive away from your annoyance all its weight. As she lingers, leading
off your thought with pleasant words, she knows well that she is
redeeming you from care, and soothing you to that sweet calm which such
home and such wife can alone bestow. And in sickness,--sickness that you
almost covet for the sympathy it brings,--that hand of hers resting on
your fevered forehead, or those fingers playing with the scattered
locks, are more full of kindness than the loudest vaunt of friends; and
when your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp that cherished
hand with a fulness of joy, of thankfulness, and of love, which your
tears only can tell.

She is good; her hopes live where the angels live. Her kindness and
gentleness are sweetly tempered with that meekness and forbearance which
are born of Faith. Trust comes into her heart as rivers come to the
sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and foreboding you rest fondly upon
her buoyant Faith, as the treasure of your common life; and in your
holier musings you look to that frail hand, and that gentle spirit, to