God to-night, I am your wife!

--_Old Clipping._

2020

THE WIFE.

I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women
sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters
which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust,
seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such
intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it
approaches to sublimity. Nothing can be more touching, than to behold a
soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and
alive to every trivial roughness, while threading the prosperous paths
of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and
supporter of her husband under misfortune and abiding with unshrinking
firmness, the bitterest blasts of adversity.

As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak,
and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is
rifted by the thunder-bolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils,
and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beautifully ordered by
Providence, that woman who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in
his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with
calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature,
tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.

I was once congratulating a friend, who had around him a blooming
family, knit together in the strongest affection. "I can wish you no
better lot," said he, with enthusiasm, "than to have a wife and
children. If you are prosperous, there they are to share your
prosperity; if otherwise, there they are to comfort you." And, indeed, I
have observed that a married man, falling into misfortune, is more apt
to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one; partly because
he is more stimulated to exertion by the necessities of the helpless and
beloved beings who depend upon him for subsistence; but chiefly because
his spirits are soothed and relieved by domestic endearments, and his
self-respect kept alive by finding, that though all abroad is darkness
and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love at home, of
which he is the monarch. Whereas, a single man is apt to run to waste
and self-neglect; to fancy himself lonely and abandoned, and his heart
to fall to ruin, like some deserted mansion, for want of an inhabitant.

These obse