es the church door to her? Not her
health, for that is excellent. It is not the baby, for her nurse, small
as she is, is quite trustworthy. It is not any trouble about dinner, for
nobody has a better cook than Mrs. Tom Pinch,--a paragon cook, in fact,
who seems to have strayed down into her kitchen from that remote
antiquity when servants were servants. No, none of these things keeps
the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking
that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of
the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good
little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful
meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good
little women know the blessings of;--none of these things at all. It is
Mrs. Tom Pinch's _bonnet_ that keeps her at home,--her last season's
bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's
practice is not larger than he can manage; Tom's family need quite all
he can make to keep them; and he has not yet been able this season to
let Mrs. Tom have the money required to provide a new fall bonnet. She
will get it before long, of course, for Tom is a good provider, and he
knows his wife to be economical. Still he cannot see--poor innocent that
he is!--why his dear little woman cannot just as well go to church in
her last fall's bonnet, which, to his purblind vision, is quite as good
as new. What, Tom! don't you know the dear little woman has too much
love for you, too much pride in you, to make a fright of herself, upon
any consideration? Don't you know that, were your wife to venture to
church in that hideous condition of which a last year's bonnet is the
efficient and unmistakable symbol, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., Mrs. C., all the
ladies of the church, in fact, would remark it at once,--would sit in
judgment upon it like a quilt committee at an industrial fair, and would
unanimously decide, either that you were a close-fisted brute to deny
such a sweet little helpmeet the very necessaries of life, or that your
legal practice was falling off so materially you could no longer support
your family? O no, Tom, your wife must not venture out to church in her
last season's bonnet! She is not without a certain sort of courage, to
be sure; she has stood by death-beds without trembling; she has endured
poverty and its privations, illness, the pains and perils of childbirth,
and many another hardship,