Some months later, this young couple sent for Hepsy to come and live with them, in their new home in Sophronia's native town. The poor girl gladly went. Henceforth she was resolved to devote herself entirely to the happiness of Chester.
He needed her, and he was able to appreciate her self-sacrifice. He would not have had much of a home without her. Sophronia was a sweet girl; but of the art—more valuable than all other arts in a wife—of making a comfortable home she was lamentably ignorant. Having been petted as an heiress, she was a complete child. Wealth can purchase certain luxuries, and insure an outside show; but the talent for making home home lies in the heart of the wife, and transcends in value all the riches of the globe.
Had it not been for the good Hepsy, Chester must have led a miserable life, with his unsatisfied domestic feelings, after all the romance of love was over. She made his fireside, and, with the influence she speedily acquired over Sophronia, drew her within the sphere of peaceful home delights, teaching her a higher, holier love for her husband than had ever entered the heart of the giddy young wife before.
And was Hepsy happy?
There are two kinds of happiness. One consists in the gratification of our wishes and desires, the attachment of friends, the admiration of the world.
Another sort of happiness lies in that noble and unselfish love, which devotes itself to promote the welfare of others, quite forgetful of all the thorns that pierce it as it treads the path of duty, and never knowing the poison of envy or the gall of hate. This is the highest, purest happiness known on earth; for it approaches the bliss of the immortals, whose home is in the heavens.
Of the former, Hepsy—the poor, sickly, deformed girl—certainly had not much; but the latter was showered upon her in rich abundance, falling like the sweet dew, for want of which the thirsty flowers gasp and wither in the sultry summer day, but which steals softly down, to bathe their rosy cheeks and lily lips, only when they bow their heads under the gloom of night.
J. T. TROWBRIDGE SERIES
Coupon Bonds.
Cudjo's Cave.
Drummer Boy, The.
Martin Merryvale, His X Mark.
Lucy Arlyn.
Father Bright Hopes.
Neighbor Jackwood.
Three Scouts, The.