“O Lord! in the plentifulness of Thy mercy, bless with all manner of mercies the great and notable man of God, whom Thou hast placed over us in speritual things. Bless him in his rising up, and goin’ about, and among the sheep of his parstur’, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
“Bless her who Thou hast given to him to be a pardner in the lan’ what flows wid milk an’ honey, an’ in de was’ and desolate po’tions, whar no water is, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
“May they two live together for many a long year, like two turtle-doves in one nes’, with nary a jar between, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth!”
“A powerful figure—that of the family jars!” said my companion, when we had had our confidential laugh out, driving homeward between the hedgerows of the plantation-road and the cool depths of forest-lands. “And the only one he did not borrow from the Bible. He knows but one book.”
XXXIV
MY NOVITIATE AS A PRACTICAL HOUSEWIFE—MY COOK “GETS HER HAND OUT”—INCEPTION OF “COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD”
Fifty years after it was written, I found among some family papers a letter from my husband to his father, dated “February 20, 1857.” His description of the cottage home in which we were now installed, as master and mistress, reads like a pastoral. He was not addicted to sentimental rhapsodies. If this were ever his style, he would have curbed the disposition to effervesce, in writing to another man. But the tone of the whole epistle is that of one thoroughly content with his home and the management thereof.
One sentence brought deep gratification to me, blended oddly with amusement and a tinge of melancholy:
“Virginia is very well and very busy. I confess to some surprise at her skill in housewifery. She seems as much at home in the kitchen as in the drawing-room, to which she is summoned many times a day to receive visitors.”