natural that we should be there, it seems so fit a place for our vitalized goodness, that the entrance into it fills us with glad sensations like those which rejoice the heart of a traveller who, after weary years, comes again to the well-known gate, walks along the familiar path through the garden of dear yellow roses and fragrant pinks that were precious to his boyhood, up to the old homestead whose every door and window smiles upon him as it did of old. We enter home when we reach the bosom of God, for there is peace and there is wisdom.

CHARLES E. ST. JOHN

Week Eleventh

WEDDED LOVE

Prelude

MY HUSBAND

He comes as a lover, with soft, noiseless feet, And I listen and wait for him, speechless and

sweet.

He comes down the pathway, his heart all aglow; I peep from my casement, and watch — for I know,

By the light in his eyes and the smile on his face,
All trembling, expectant, all shining with trace
Of the same love, soul-lighted, that blessed me in
youth,

That he loves me as ever, still truly as truth.

He is constant and faithful, I know he is mine; In the sadness of sorrow, through shadow and shine,

He hath soothed my caprice with a kindness that told

How precious his love, more than rubies and

gold;

And often and often, far back in the years,

I know that my waywardness grieved him to tears; And now, as I wait for him, can I forget

That he loves me, and loves me more tenderly yet?

How steadfast in purpose, how pure in his heart, And that I, poor and helpless, should live as its

part,

When he took me and blessed me, and called me

his own,

And now for his bread, do I give him a stone?

O no! for I love him as woman can love,

I know of his olive branch I am the dove;

And tranquil and happy and joyous my life,

As I feel that he loves me that I am his wife.

ALPHONSE DAYTON

105

For they that have kept holily the things that are holy shall themselves be hallowed.

WISDOM OF SOLOMON vi. 10.

He safely walks in darkest ways,
Whose youth is lighted from above,
Where through the senses' silvery haze,
Dawns the veil'd moon of nuptial love.

Who is the Happy Husband? He
Who, scanning his unwedded life,
Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
'Twas faithful to his future Wife.

COVENTRY PATMORE

L

...

ITTLE think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. . . . At last they discover that all which at first drew them together - those once sacred features, that magical play of charms,— was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart, from year to year, is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on forever.

...

EMERSON

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment. PHILIPPIANS i. 9.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SHAKESPEARE

The

HE sunrise of the new life breaks.

TH

two are mated with the solemn questions: "Wilt thou love her, honor her, cherish and comfort her, in health and in sickness, in joy and in "Wilt sorrow, so long as ye both shall live? thou take him for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, and try to live with him the divinest life thou knowest?" Then begin the daily, hourly answers to these questions,— living answers so different from the worded "I will" of the moment. . . . The supreme beauty is attained when both realize that the inmost secret of true marriage is to love the ideals better than each other. For this alone guarantees the perfect purity, and therefore this alone can guarantee the lastingness of love. Literally, literally so!

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honor more."

WILLIAM C. GANNETT