Just so it is with everything else: our lane is the most beautiful for twenty miles round, because our home is in it; and my garden is a perfect paradise, for no other particular reason than this very good one, that it belongs to the old house at home.
Husbands should try to make home happy and holy. It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest, a bad man who makes his home wretched. Our house ought to be a little church, with holiness to the Lord over the door; but it ought never to be a prison, where there is plenty of rule and order, but little love and no pleasure.
Married life is not all sugar, but grace in the heart will keep away most of the sours. Godliness and love can make a man, like a bird in a hedge, sing among thorns and briars, and set others a-singing too. It should be the husband’s pleasure to please his wife, and the wife’s care to care for her husband. He is kind to himself who is kind to his wife. I am afraid some men live by the rule of self, and when that is the case home happiness is a mere sham. When husbands and wives are well yoked, how light their load becomes!
It is not every couple that is a pair, and the more’s the pity. In a true home all the strife is which can do the most to make the family happy. A home should be a Bethel, not a Babel. The husband should be the house-band, binding all together like a corner-stone, but not crushing everything like a millstone.
Nothing is improved by anger, unless it be the arch of a cat’s back. A man with his back up is spoiling his figure. People look none the handsomer for being red in the face. It takes a great deal out of a man to get into a towering rage; it is almost as unhealthy as having a fit, and time has been when men have actually choked themselves with passion, and died on the spot. Whatever wrong I suffer, it cannot do me half so much hurt as being angry about it; for passion shortens life and poisons peace.
When once we give way to temper, temper will get right of way, and come in easier every time. He that will be in a pet for any little thing, will soon be out at elbows about nothing at all. A thunder-storm curdles the milk, and so does a passion sour the heart and spoil the character.
LITTLE PEARL AND HER MOTHER.
By Nathaniel Hawthorne.