University of Virginia Library

VII.
A Good Wife.

THE thought of Nelly suggests new dreams, that
are little apt to find place in the rhapsodies of a
youthful lover. The very epithet of a good wife,
mates tamely with the romantic fancies of a first
passion. It is measuring the ideal by too practical a
standard. It sweeps away all the delightful vagueness
of a fairy dream of love, and reduces one to a dull, and
economic estimate of actual qualities Passion lives
above all analysis and estimate, and arrives at its
conclusions by intuition.

Did Petrarch ever think if Laura would make
a good wife; did Oswald ever think it of Corinne?
Nay, did even the more practical Waverley, ever think
it of the impassioned Flora? Would it not weaken

faith in their romantic passages, if you believed it?
What have such vulgar, practical issues to do with that
passion which sublimates the faculties, and makes the
loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere, where nothing
but goodness and brightness can come?

Nelly is to be pitied for entertaining such a thought;
and yet Nelly is very good, and kind. Her affections
are, without doubt, all centred in the remnant of the
shattered home: she has never known any further, and
deeper love,—never once fancied it even—

—Ah, Clarence, you are very young!

And yet there are some things that puzzle you in
Nelly. You have found, accidentally, in one of her
treasured books,—a book that lies almost always on her
dressing table,—a little withered flower, with its stem in
a slip of paper; and on the paper the initials of—your
old friend Frank. You recall, in connection with this,
her indisposition to talk of him on the first evening of
your return. It seems,—you scarce know why—that
these are the tokens of something very like a leaning of
the heart. It does occur to you, that she too, may
have her little casket of loves; and you try one day,
very adroitly, to take a look into this casket.

—You will learn, later in life, that the heart of a
modest, gentle girl, is a very hard matter, for even a
brother to probe: it is at once the most tender, and the
most unapproachable of all fastnesses. It admits

feeling, by armies, with great trains of artillery,—but
not a single scout. It is as calm and pure as polar
snows; but deep underneath, where no footsteps have
gone, and where no eye can reach, but one, lies the
warm, and the throbbing earth.

Make what you will of the slight, quivering blushes,
and of the half-broken expressions,—more you cannot
get. The love that a delicate-minded girl will tell, is a
short-sighted, and outside love; but the love that she
cherishes without voice or token, is a love that will
mould her secret sympathies, and her deepest, fondest
yearnings, either to a quiet world of joy, or to a world
of placid sufferance. The true voice of her love she
will keep back long and late, fearful ever of her most
prized jewel,—fearful to strange sensitiveness: she will
show kindness, but the opening of the real flood-gates
of the heart, and the utterance of those impassioned
yearnings, which belong to its nature, come far later.
And fearful, thrice fearful is the shock, if these flow
out unmet!

That deep, thrilling voice bearing all the perfume of
the womanly soul in its flow, rarely finds utterance; and
if uttered vainly,—if called out by tempting devices,
and by a trust that is abused,—desolate indeed is the
maiden heart,—widowed of its chastest thought! The
soul shrinks affrighted within itself. Like a tried bird,
lost at sea,—fluttering around what seem friendly

boughs, it stoops at length, and finding only cold,
slippery spars, with no bloom and no foliage—its last
hope gone—it sinks to a wild, ocean grave!

Nelly—and the thought brings a tear of sympathy
to your eye—must have such a heart: it speaks in
every shadow of her action. And this very delicacy
seems to lend her a charm, that would make her a wife,
to be loved and honored.

Aye, there is something in that maidenly modesty,
retiring from you, as you advance,—retreating timidly
from all bold approaches, fearful and yet joyous, which
wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature, like a
rising flame. To force of action and resolve, he opposes
force: to strong will, he mates his own: pride lights
pride; but to the gentleness of the true womanly
character, he yields with a gush of tenderness that
nothing else can call out. He will never be subjugated
on his own ground of action and energy; but let him
be lured to that border country, over which the delicacy,
and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his
energy yields, his haughty determination faints,—he is
proud of submission!

And with this thought of modesty, and gentleness to
illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the
pleasant phantom to that shadowy home,—lying far off
in the future,—of which she is the glory, and the
crown. I know it is the fashion now-a-days with many,

to look for a woman's excellencies, and influence,—away
from her home; but I know too, that a vast many
eager, and hopeful hearts, still cherish the belief that
her virtues will range highest, and live longest within
those sacred walls.

Where indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue of
a woman, tell a stronger story of its worth, than upon
the dawning habit of a child? Where can her grace
of character win a higher, and a riper effect, than upon
the action of her household? What mean those noisy
declaimers who talk of the feeble influence, and of the
crushed faculties of a woman?

What school of learning, or of moral endeavor,
depends more on its teacher, than the home upon the
mother? What influence of all the world's professors,
and teachers, tells so strongly on the habit of a man's
mind, as those gentle droppings from a mother's lips,
which, day by day, and hour by hour, grow into the
enlarging stature of his soul, and live with it forever?
They can hardly be mothers, who aim at a broader, and
noisier field: they have forgotten to be daughters: they
must needs have lost the hope of being wives!

Be this how it may, the heart of a man, with whom
affection is not a name, and love a mere passion of the
hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home, as toward
the goal of his earthly joy, and hope. And as you
fasten there, your thought, an indulgent, yet dreamy

fancy paints the loved image that is to adorn it, and to
make it sacred.

—She is there to bid you—God speed!—and an
adieu, that hangs like music on your ear, as you go out
to the every day labor of life. At evening, she is there
to greet you, as you come back wearied with a day's
toil; and her look so full of gladness, cheats you of
your fatigue; and she steals her arm around you, with
a soul of welcome, that beams like sunshine on her brow
and that fills your eye with tears of a twin gratitude—
to her, and Heaven!

She is not unmindful of those old-fashioned virtues
of cleanliness, and of order, which give an air of quiet,
and which secure content. Your wants are all anticipated;
the fire is burning brightly; the clean hearth
flashes under the joyous blaze; the old elbow chair is
in its place. Your very unworthiness of all this haunts
you like an accusing spirit, and yet penetrates your
heart with a new devotion, toward the loved one who is
thus watchful of your comfort.

She is gentle;—keeping your love, as she has won it,
by a thousand nameless and modest virtues, which
radiate from her whole life and action. 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. And in sickness,—sickness that you
almost covet for the sympathy it brings,—that hand of
hers resting on your fevered forehead, or those fingers
playing with the scattered locks, are more full of kindness
than the loudest vaunt of friends; and when
your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp

that cherished hand,—with a fullness of joy, of
thankfulness, and of love, which your tears only can
tell.

She is good;—her hopes live, where the angels live.
Her kindness and gentleness are sweetly tempered with
that meekness and forbearance which are born of
Faith. Trust comes into her heart, as rivers come to
the sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and fore-boding,
you rest fondly upon her buoyant Faith, as the
treasure of your common life; and in your holier
musings, you look to that frail hand, and that gentle
spirit, to lead you away from the vanities of worldly
ambition, to the fullness of that joy, which the good
inherit.

—Is Laura Dalton, such an one?