"I ricollect our Mite Society got to talkin' one day about husbands and wives leavin' each other, and whether it was ever right or lawful for married folks to part and marry again. Maria Petty says, says she, 'There's some things that every woman's called on to stand, and there's some things that no woman ought to stand.' And Sally Ann says, 'Yes, and as long as you women think you have to stand things, you'll have things to stand.' And Milly Amos says, 'A husband and a wife can part when there's no children, but,' says she, 'if they've had children, you might put the husband on one side o' the world and the wife on the other and they're husband and wife still, for there's the children holdin' 'em together.' I ricollect everybody had a different opinion, and the longer we talked the further we got from any sort of agreement about it."
And as it was in Goshen so was it in Athens when Plato wrote and taught, and so it is to-day wherever human wisdom offers its varying solutions to this problem of the ages.
"What do you think about it, Aunt Jane?" I asked.
Aunt Jane was silent. Intuitively she felt the magnitude of the question. We had laughed over the comedy of her story, but its rustic scenery had shifted, and we were standing now in the tragic presence of a social sphinx, whose mystery calls for baffled silence rather than confident speech.
"Well, honey," she said at last, thoughtfully and hesitatingly, "if folks could only love each other the way me and Abram did, they'll never want to part; and of course if they love each other they'll trust each other; and if the love and the trust runs short, why, then they ought to be patient and try to bear with each other's failin's. But, as Maria Petty used to say, there's some things that no woman is called on to bear, and no man, either, for that matter, and if married folks feel that they can't stand livin' together I ain't the one to judge 'em, for I never had anything to stand, and happy folks oughtn't to judge the folks that's unhappy. It does look like to me that if the husbands and wives in Goshen could stay married anybody could, but maybe I don't know. And when a person gits all twisted and turned so's they can't tell what's right and what's wrong, why, it ain't time for passin' judgment and givin' opinions, and I reckon I'll jest have to fall back on that text o' Scripture that says all things are workin' together for good. Not some things, honey, but 'all things.' Did you ever think o' that? The things you want and the things you don't want; the things you complain about and the things you rejoice about; the things you laugh over and the things you cry over—all of 'em workin', not against each other, but together, and all workin' for good. I ricollect hearin' a sermon once on that very passage o' Scripture. The preacher said that that text was like a sea without a shore; its meanin' was as wide and as deep as the love of God, and if we could only take it in and believe it, we'd never have any fears or any misgivin's again. And then, there's that verse o' Brownin's that says God's in his heaven and everything's right with the world. So I reckon, in spite of all this marryin' and partin' and marryin' again, the world's in safe hands and movin' on in the right way."
Aunt Jane was smiling now, for on these winged words of apostle and poet her soul had risen into its native atmosphere of serene faith, casting upon the shoulders of Omnipotence the burden of world-sorrow and world-sin that only Omnipotence can lift and bear.