She steals upon your affections like a summer wind breathing
softly over sleeping valleys. She gains a mastery over your sterner
nature by very contrast, and wins you unwittingly to her lightest wish.
And yet her wishes are guided by that delicate tact which avoids
conflict with your manly pride; she subdues by seeming to yield. By a
single soft word of appeal she robs your vexation of its anger; and,
with a slight touch of that fair hand, and one pleading look of that
earnest eye, she disarms your sternest pride.
She is kind,--shedding her kindness as heaven sheds dew. Who indeed
could doubt it?--least of all you, who are living on her kindness day by
day, as flowers live on light? There is none of that officious parade
which blunts the point of benevolence; but it tempers every action with
a blessing. If trouble has come upon you, she knows that her voice,
beguiling you into cheerfulness, will lay your fears; and as she draws
her chair beside you, she knows that the tender and confiding way with
which she takes your hand, and looks up into your earnest face, will
drive away from your annoyance all its weight. As she lingers, leading
off your thought with pleasant words, she knows well that she is
redeeming you from care, and soothing you to that sweet calm which such
home and such wife can alone bestow.
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