TONE UP.
The most worthy thing for the thousands of married men to do is to go home and apologize for past neglects and brighten up their old love. Take up the family Bible and read the record of the marriage day. Open the drawer of relics in the box inside the drawer containing the trinkets of your dead child. Take up the pack of yellow-colored letters that were written before you became one. Rehearse the scenes of joy and sorrow in which you have mingled. Put all these things as fuel on the altar, and by a coal of sacred fire rekindle the extinguished light. It was a blast from hell that blew it out, and a gale from heaven will fan it into a blaze.
Ye who have broken marriage vows, speak out! take your wife into all your plans, your successes, your defeats, your ambitions. Tell her everything. Walk arm in arm with her into places of amusement, and on the piazza of summer watering places, and up the rugged way of life, and down through dark ravine, and when one trembles on the way let the other be re-enforcement. In no case pass yourself off as a single man, practicing gallantries. Do not, after you are fifty years of age, in ladies' society, try to look young-mannish.
RESPECT HER PIETY.
Interfere not with your wife's religious nature. Put her not in that awful dilemma in which so many Christian wives are placed by their husbands, who ask them to go to places or do things which compel them to decide between loyalty to God and loyalty to the husband. Rather than ask her to compromise her Christian character encourage her to be more and more a Christian, for there will be times in your life when you will want the help of all her Christian resources; and certainly, when you remember how much influence your mother had over you, you do not want the mother of your children to set a less gracious example. It pleases me greatly to hear the unconverted and worldly husband say about his wife, with no idea that it will get to her ears: "There is the most godly woman alive. Her goodness is a perpetual rebuke to my waywardness. Nothing on earth could ever induce her to do a wrong thing. I hope the children will take after her instead of after me. If there is any heaven at all I am sure she will go there."
THE PRIEST OF THE HOUSEHOLD.
Ay, my brother, do you not think it would be a wise and a safe thing for you to join her on the road to heaven? You think you have a happy home now, but what a home you would have if you both were religious! What a new sacredness it would give to your marital relation, and what a new light it would throw on the forehead of your children! In sickness, what a comfort! In reverses of fortune, what a wealth! In death, what a triumph! God meant you to be the high priest of your household. Go home to-day and take the Bible on your lap, and gather all your family yet living around you, and those not living will hear of it in a flash, and as ministering spirits will hover—father and mother and children gone, and all your celestial kindred. Then kneel down, and if you can't think of a prayer to offer I will give you a prayer—namely: "Lord God, I surrender to Thee myself and my beloved wife, and these dear children. For Christ's sake forgive all the past and help us for all the future. We have lived together here, may we live together forever. Amen and amen." Dear me, what a stir it would make among your best friends on earth and in heaven.
A HUSBAND IMPRISONED.
Joseph the Second, the Emperor, was so kind and so philanthropic that he excited the unbounded love of most of his subjects. He abolished serfdom, established toleration and lived in the happiness of his people. One day while on his way to Ostend to declare it a free port, and while at the head of a great procession, he saw a woman at the door of her cottage in dejection. The Emperor dismounted and asked the cause of her grief. She said that her husband had gone to Ostend to see the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was an alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it was the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose kindness and goodness and greatness she had an unspeakable admiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and see him was simply unbearable.
The Emperor Joseph took from his pocket a box decorated with diamonds surrounding a picture of himself and presented it to her, and when the picture revealed to whom she was talking she knelt in reverence and clapped her hands in gladness before him. The Emperor took the name of her husband and the probable place where he might be found at Ostend, and had him imprisoned for the three days of the Emperor's visit, so that the husband returning home found that the wife had seen the Emperor while he had not seen him.