DEACON PITKIN’S FARM.
The New England wife-mother.
New England had of old times, and has still, perhaps, in her farm-houses, these women who seem from year to year to develop in the spiritual sphere as the bodily form shrinks and fades. While the cheek grows thin and the form spare, the will-power grows daily stronger; though the outer man perish, the inner man is renewed day by day. The worn hand that seems so weak yet holds every thread and controls every movement of the most complex family life, and wonders are daily accomplished by the presence of a woman who seems little more than a spirit. The New England wife-mother was the one little jeweled pivot on which all the wheel-work of the family moved.
Suppression.
It was not the first time that, wounded by a loving hand in this dark struggle of life, she had suppressed the pain of her own hurt, that he that had wounded her might the better forgive himself.