So, dear ones, keep your very best manners for home, and they will not fail you in other circles.
Dear girl wives, be as thoughtful for your husbands as you were for your lovers—and more. Do not let them miss the loving farewell when they go out to their daily battle with the world, whether it be in the field of commerce, the learned professions, art, or behind the counter.
In the humbler but no less useful fields of toil, the farm or the mill, the man will be cheered by the memory of loving words and the prospect of your welcoming face and kiss when he comes home weary, toil-worn, perchance downhearted.
And knowing how you will meet him, he will quicken his tired feet, that he may the sooner receive the greeting for which his heart longs. If he has good news to bring, the way will seem doubly long because of his eagerness to share it with you.
There are times when the best of men are almost too sad and weary to bear sympathy of the demonstrative sort, when everything seems to have gone wrong, and all they want is just to be left in peace for a while.
Real sympathy is many-sided, as you all know. It may be of the fussy sort, which cannot be satisfied without incessant expression, either in word or deed. Kindly meant, it is apt to jar on its object.
There may be more wisdom and no less sympathy shown by silence than by words. Thoughtful loving actions will not be lost on the weary, worried man of business, who has found it impossible to leave all his cares outside the threshold of home. I knew a man who used to say to his almost too sympathetic wife, “Let me be quiet a little, my dear, I want to think things out. I shall be all right by and by.”
Then the wife knew that kind words or the touch of a loving hand was better withheld, and possessed her soul in patience until the thinking out was done, and her husband was his bright self again.
The wife’s character should be great enough to grasp the greatest things that come within her province, yet comprehensive enough to stoop to the least. Do you wish to look upon a picture which represents a perfect wife? There is one drawn in words by an inspired writer. Turn to Proverbs xxxi., and read from the tenth verse to the end.
Note, first, her value. “Her price is far above rubies.” Her faithfulness. “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.”