The graces of patience, sublime calmness, golden silence, should be cultivated with delightful zeal. You may each have had your way, but now the way of another must be respected. Besides, it may be a much better and safer way than yours. John Angell James says: "Where both have infirmities, and they are so constantly together, innumerable occasions will be furnished, if we are eager, or even willing, to avail ourselves of the opportunities for those contentions which, if they do not produce a permanent suppression of love, lead to its temporary interruption. Many things we should connive at, others we should pass by with an unprovoked mind, and in all things most carefully avoid even what at first may seem to be an innocent disputation."
The real basis of adaptation is mutual respect and love. Neither the husband nor the wife must judge each other too critically. The indiscreet word, or error of any kind, must never be allowed to cause a doubt as to the heart's deep affection. Gentleness, patience, time, will give ample opportunity for the full sunlight to break forth. Each heart needs the other for true happiness. It must be a united life. In "Hiawatha" we read the true relation:
"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him;
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other."
The married life, to be supremely happy, must be thoroughly unselfish. I was once on shipboard with a tourist who was accompanied by his wife, but for whose opinion he seemed, even to other travelers, to show but little respect. The voyage was a long one, and while the wife's bearing was most gentle and kindly, his manner impressed me as thoroughly selfish. I do not imagine that he was aware of the abrupt and strongly personal quality of his bearing toward his refined and cultured wife. With all his wealth he lacked that appearance of tenderness which is more than gold or precious stones.
No effort must be spared by either husband or wife to contribute to the other's happiness and comfort. It does not require a long time, especially when living together, for one to see what will please another. This desire to please, strengthening with the days and years, revealing itself in a thousand kindly ways, will do more than any thing else to make the home a paradise on earth.
Cowper gives the true secret of a beautiful and strengthening reciprocal adaptation:
I believe the Germans excel all others in literature in their warm tributes to the faithful love and devotion of their wives. Kerner, the Suabian author, said this beautiful word in testimony of his wife after their long years of happiness together: "She hath borne with me." Martin Luther said of his wife, the devoted Catherine: "I would not exchange my poverty with her for all the riches of Crœsus without her." Bismarck, the man of "blood and iron," says of his wife: "She it is who made me what I am."