The mother's brow loses its
shadow; day dawns within as well as without, and on bended knees God is
thanked!
Perhaps poverty faces you;--your darling schemes break down. One by one,
with failing heart, you strip the luxuries from life. But the sorrow
which oppresses you is not the selfish sorrow which the lone man feels:
it is far nobler; its chiefest mourning is over the despoiled home.
Frank must give up his promised travel; Madge must lose her favorite
pony; Nelly must be denied her little _fete_ upon the lawn. The home
itself, endeared by so many scenes of happiness and by so many of
suffering, must be given up. It is hard, very hard, to tear away your
wife from the flowers, the birds, the luxuries, that she has made so
dear.
Now she is far stronger than you. She contrives new joys; she wears a
holy calm; she cheers by a new hopefulness; she buries even the memory
of luxury in the riches of the humble home that her wealth of heart
endows. Her soul, catching radiance from that heavenly world where her
hope lives, kindles amid the growing shadows, and sheds balm upon the
little griefs,--like the serene moon, slanting the dead sun's life, upon
the night!
Courage wakes in the presence of those dependent on your toil.
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