The Wedding Ring. T. De Witt Talmage
are off at Saratoga, Mount Desert, or the White Sulphur. These are the men who, never having had much education themselves, have their sons at Yale, and Harvard, and Virginia University. These are the men who work themselves to death by fifty years of age, and go out to Greenwood leaving large estate and generous life-insurance provision for their families.
There are husbands and fathers here by the hundreds who would die for their households. If outlawry should ever become dominant in our cities they would stand in their doorway, and with their own arm would cleave down, one by one, fifty invaders face to face, foot to foot, and every stroke a demolition. This is what makes an army in defence in a country fight more desperately than an army of conquest. It is not so much the abstract sentiment of a flag as it is wife, and children, and home that turns enthusiasm into a fury. The world has such men by the million, and the homunculi that infest all our communities must not hinder women from appreciating the glory of true manhood.
FIDELITY IN ADVERSITY.
I was reading of a bridal reception. The young man had brought home the choice of his heart in her elaborate and exquisite apparel. As she stood in the gay drawing-room, and amid the gay group, the young man's eyes filled with tears of joy as he thought that she was his. Years passed by, and they stood at the same parlor on another festal occasion. She wore the same dress, for business had not opened as brightly to the young husband as he expected, and he had never been able to purchase for her another dress. Her face was not as bright and smooth as it had been years before, and a careworn look had made its signature on her countenance. As the husband looked at her he saw the difference between this occasion and the former, and he went over to where she sat, and said: "You remember the time when we were here before. You have the same dress on. Circumstances have somewhat changed, but you look to me far more beautiful than you did then." There is such a thing as conjugal fidelity, and many of you know it in your own homes.
But, after all the good advice we may give you, we come back to the golden pillar from which we started, the tremendous truth that no one but God can guide you in safety about this matter that may decide your happiness for two worlds, this and the next. So, my sister, I put your case where Naomi put that of Ruth and Orpah when she said: "The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband."
THE WEDDING.
I imagine the hour for which you pledged your troth has arrived. There is much merry-making among your young friends, but there is an undertone of sadness in all the house. Your choice may have been the gladdest and the best, and the joy of the whole round of relatives, but when a young eaglet is about to leave the old nest, and is preparing to put out into sunshine and storm for itself, it feels its wings tremble somewhat. So she has a good cry before leaving home, and at the marriage father and mother always cry, or feel like it. If you think it is easy to give up a daughter in marriage, though it be with brightest prospects, you will think differently when the day comes. To have all along watched her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood, studious of her welfare, her slightest illness an anxiety, and her presence in your home an ever-increasing joy, and then have her go away to some other home—aye, all the redolence of orange-blossoms, and all the chime of marriage bells, and all the rolling of wedding march in full diapason, and all the hilarious congratulations of your friends cannot make you forget that you are suffering a loss irreparable. But you know it is all right, and you have a remembrance of an embarkation just like it twenty-five or thirty years ago, in which you were one of the parties; and, suppressing as far as possible your sadness, you say, "Good-bye."
VISIT THE OLD HOME.
I hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write often home; for, whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose their interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and stay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place after awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on father's head and more wrinkles on mother's brow; and after awhile you will notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day one of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile the other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to yourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are faithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the first friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted than you ever can be to any one else except to God—I mean your father and mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:
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