E. J. Hardy

“ Ought husbands and wives to be ill-natured judges of what is amiss?
"Let a man," says Seneca, "consider his own vices, reflect upon his own follies, and he will see that he has the greatest reason to be angry with himself." The best advice to give husband and wife is to ask them to resolve in the words of Shakespeare, "I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults." Why beholdest thou the mote that is in the eye of thy matrimonial bargain, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ”

“ Art in prosperity? thine happiness is doubled. Art in adversity? she'll comfort, assist, bear a part of thy burden to make it more tolerable. Art at home? she'll drive away melancholy. Art abroad? she looks after thee going from home, wishes for thee in thine absence, and joyfully welcomes thy return. There's nothing delightsome without society, no society so sweet as matrimony. The band of conjugal love is adamantine. The sweet company of kinsmen increaseth, the number of parents is doubled, of brothers, sisters, nephews. Thou art made a father by a fair and happy issue. ”

“ Tommy Atkins, you're a hero,
With your 'masterly retreat'!"
"Ah," said a French officer, "we lose so heavily, we French. We haven't the patience of the English. They are fine and can wait: we must rush."
But indeed the very constancy of the courage of our soldiers may sometimes hide it. We take it for granted. We become so accustomed to read of the coolness of Mr. Thomas Atkins amidst a hail of bullets, that we begin to fancy that with a good umbrella we would be equally indifferent to the shower. Is courage then natural, and are all men brave? ”

“ Far more truly loving is the mother who sends her son into the battle of life preferring anything for him rather than a soft, indolent, useless existence. Such a mother is like those Spartan mothers who used to say to their sons as they handed to them their shields, "With it or upon it, my son!" Better death than dishonour was also the feeling of the mother of the successful missionary William Knibb. ”

“ When girls have been given work in the world they do not think that any husband is better than none, and they have not time to imagine themselves in love with the first man who proposes. How often is it the case that people think themselves in love when in fact they are only idle!
There are hearts all the better for keeping; they become mellower and more worth a woman's acceptance than the crude, unripe things that are sometimes gathered—as children gather green fruit—to the discomfort of those who obtain them. A husband may be too young to properly appreciate and take care of a wife. ”

“ Selfishness crushes out love, and most of the couples who are living without affection for each other, with cold and dead hearts, with ashes where there should be a bright and holy flame, have destroyed themselves by caring too much for themselves and too little for each other.
Each young couple that begins housekeeping on the right basis brings the Garden of Eden before man once more. There are they, two, alone; love raises a wall between them and the outer world. There is no serpent there—and, indeed, he need never come, nor does he, so long as Adam and Eve keep him at bay ”

“ The one regret to avoid is, that when married life is over, over for ever, to the survivor should come the unutterable but saddening thought, that now, in the late autumn of life, when experience can be no longer of any possible value, he or she understands, at last understands, all that the chivalry of holy matrimony implies and claims on both sides, in manly forbearance, in delicate thoughtfulness, in loving courtesy. ”

“ Yes, God is thinking about our highest interests when He sends children to us. They are sent as little missionaries to turn us from evil and to develop within us the Divine image. When we see sin stirring in our children, no stroke seems too heavy to crush the noxious passion before it grows to fell dimensions and laughs to scorn the sternest chastisement. Heaven is saying to us, "Physician, heal thyself; strike hard, (p. 161) strike home; purge thine own heart of the evil. Lest your children should suffer, restrain your temper, curb your passions, master your unholy desires." ”

“ The hard-drawn line of simply paying the bills closes a thousand avenues to gentle joys and pleasures in a woman's daily life.
We would advise all wives to strike the iron when hot, so to speak, by getting their husbands, before the ardour of the honeymoon cools, to give them an annual allowance. The little unavoidable demands on a husband's purse, to which a wife is so frequently compelled to have recourse, are very apt to create bickering and discord; and when once good-humour is put out of the way, it is not such an easy matter to bring it back again. ”

“ Thus from babyhood they should be habituated to look up to, not down on, their mother. She should find time, or make it, to care for her own culture; to keep her intellectual and her art nature alive. The children may advance beyond her knowledge; let her look to it that they do not advance beyond her intellectual sympathies. Woe to both her and them if she does not keep them well in sight!
Happiness is the natural condition of every normal child, and if the small boy or girl has a peculiar facility for any one thing, it is for self-entertainment. ”

“ After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces."
Every little dispute between man and wife is dangerous. It forces good-humour out of its channel, undermines affection, and insidiously, though perhaps insensibly, wears out and, at last, entirely destroys that cordiality which is the life and soul of matrimonial felicity. ”

“ We expect too much from life in general, and from married life in particular. When castle-building before marriage we imagine a condition never experienced on this side of heaven; and when real life comes with its troubles and cares, the tower of romance falls with a crash, leaving us in the mud-hut of every-day reality. Better to enter the marriage state in the frame of mind of that company of American settlers, who, in naming their new town, called it Dictionary, "because," as they said, "that's the only place where peace, prosperity, and happiness are always to be found." ”

“ It would be much better to call in the assistance of proper pride than to whine in this cowardly fashion. "We mortals," says George Eliot, "men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, 'Oh, nothing!' Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others." (p. 58) "To feel the chains, but take especial care the world shall not hear them clank. 'Tis a prudence that often passes for happiness. ”

“ It is the bounden duty of those who live together to cultivate the sunny side of life. To rejoice with those who rejoice is as much a duty as to weep with those that weep. Many have not that "great hereditary constitutional joy" which springs from a natural genius for happiness, but all may at least try to add to the stock of the household's cheerfulness. ”

“ Self-respect should lead us to have things nice in our homes, whether the eyes of company are to see them or not. It was surely right of Robinson Crusoe to make his solitary cave look as smart as possible. Who does not respect the wife whose dinner-table is prettily adorned with flowers even on days when no one but her husband has the honour of dining with her? ”

“ No wonder that a good mother has been called nature's chef d'œuvre, for she is not only the perfection of womanhood, but the most beautiful and valuable of nature's productions. To her the world is indebted for the work done by most of its great and gifted men. As letters cut in the bark of a young tree grow and widen with age, so do the ideas which a mother implants in the mind of her talented child. Thus Scott is said to have received his first bent towards ballad literature from his mother's and grandmother's recitations in his hearing long before he himself had learned to read. ”

“ As soon as they are out of my sight I see clearly where my mistakes are; but when they are around me I forget my good resolutions."
It is quite true that the dear ones at home are more to us than Kings and Queens, than House of Lords or House of Commons, than the mightiest and noblest in the world. And yet we often treat them worse than we treat strangers. With others, whom we meet in business or in society, we are half unconsciously on our guard. Hasty words are repressed, and frowns are banished. ”

“ FURNISHING. "By wisdom is a house built; by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the chambers are filled with all pleasant and precious treasures."—Solomon's Practical Wisdom.
"We cannot arrest sunsets nor carve mountains, but we may turn every English home, if we choose, into a picture which shall be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed."—Ruskin. ”

“ True courtesy exhibits itself in a disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, and in refraining from all that may annoy them. And the cultivation day by day of this sweet reasonableness is almost as necessary to the comfort of those who live together as the daily calls of the milkman and the baker. If no two people have it so much in their power to torment each other as husband and wife, it is their bounden duty to guard against this liability by cultivating the habit of domestic politeness. ”

“ That going out for the honeymoon is a most wise and useful invention; it enables you to be so constantly together, and to obtain a deeper knowledge of each other; and it also helps one to see and feel the preciousness of such intimacy as nothing else could. Intercourse in the presence of others never leads below the surface, and it is in the very depths of our being that true calm, deep and true peace and love lie. Nothing so well prepares for the serious duties of after-life. ”

“ Certainly a man should marry to obtain a friend and companion rather than a cook and housekeeper; but yet that girl is a prize indeed who has so well prepared herself for the business of wifehood as to be able to keep not only her husband company, but her house in good order. "If that man is to be regarded as a benefactor of his species who makes two stalks of corn to grow where only one grew before, not less is she to be regarded as a public benefactor who economizes and turns to the best practical account the food products of human skill and labour." ”

“ No! not a dog, but a young man or a young woman who is liable to forget that "small habits well pursued betimes may reach the dignity of crimes." If you do not measure your liquor with as much care as strong medicine; if you are not on your guard against those drinking habits of society and business which first draw, then drag, and then haul—beware lest tyrant custom make you a slave to what has been called "the most authentic incarnation of the principle of evil." ”

“ We go through the temple of Hymen without noticing, much less appreciating, its beauty. Certainly few people gain as much happiness from their marriage as they might. They expect to find happiness without taking any trouble to make it, or they are so selfishly preoccupied that they cannot enjoy. In this way many a husband and wife only begin to value each other when death is at hand to separate them. ”

“ Yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some there are who, though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times impertinences. Nay, there are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges. Nay more, there are some foolish, rich, covetous men that take a pride in having no children because they may be thought so much the richer. ”

“ It has been said that to have loved and lost—either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love, namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness—this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear. ”

“ Even to attempt to answer the wise questions of children is a task difficult enough to afford healthy exercise to the greatest minds. When a child begins to cross-examine its parents as to why the fire burns, how his carte-de-visite was taken, how many stars there are, why people suffer, why God does not kill the devil—grown-up ignorance or want of sympathy too often laughs at him, says that children should not ask tiresome questions, and not only checks the inquiring spirit within him, but misses the intellectual improvement that would have come from endeavouring to answer his questions. ”

“ Home discovers all faults; religion should bless it with the abundance of charity. Home is the place for impressions, for instruction and culture; there should religion open her treasures of wisdom and pronounce her heavenly benediction. ”

“ A soft answer turns away wrath, and when a wife or a husband is irritated there is nothing like letting a subject drop. Then silence is indeed golden. But the silence persisted in—as by the lady in the old comedy, who, in reply to her husband's "For heaven's sake, my dear, do tell me what you mean," obstinately keeps her lips closed—is an instrument of deadly torture. "A wise man by his words maketh himself beloved." ”

“ But when they do pull together what greater thing is there for them than "to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in the silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?" ”

“ A new home is being formed in reference to which the bride and groom should think, "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." The parish church is called "God's House;" but if all the parishioners rightly used their matrimony, every house in the parish might be called the same. Home is the place of the highest joys; religion should sanctify it. Home is the sphere of the deepest sorrows; the highest consolation of religion should assuage its griefs. Home is the place of the greatest intimacy of heart with heart ”