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The young man says to his bride: "I love you, darling, so much that I could carry you on my hands all through life!"—A year after the wedding it may happen that he cannot carry up a bucket of coal from the basement for her.
That's strange, too.
The young woman says to her fiancé: "I love you so much that I could die for you!"—But if it is a question of that new Easter bonnet, she cannot save a dollar out of regard for her husband's pocketbook: She doesn't love him that much.
You do not love each other enough to sacrifice for each other's sake—or to be a bit patient with each other—or to cut down a little your own personal demands out of regard for each other. Therefore we have so many divorces.
"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth."
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Charles Dickens tells in one of his books of two sisters who are discussing how intently they wish to do something really great and good. Under the petty circumstances at home they couldn't get the chance. But if they might be sent out as missionaries among the heathens—O, how they would toil just to help those poor people! It didn't matter that perhaps they would have to suffer the pangs of hunger and persecution—if they only could show people their love.
Just then their old grandmother who was sick abed in the next room, said: "O, girls, won't one of you come and scratch my back?"