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. Love arms your hand and quickens your brain. Resolutions break large from the swelling soul. Energy leaps into your action like light. Gradually you bring back into your humble home a few traces of the luxury that once adorned it. That wife, whom it is your greatest pleasure to win to smiles, wears a half-sad look as she meets these proofs of love; she fears that you are perilling too much for her pleasure. ----For the first time in life you deceive her. You have won wealth again; you now step firmly upon your new-gained sandals of gold. But you conceal it from her. You contrive a little scheme of surprise, with Frank alone in the secret. You purchase again the old home; you stock it, as far as may be, with the old luxuries; a new harp is in the place of that one which beguiled so many hours of joy; new and cherished flowers bloom again upon the windows; her birds hang, and warble their melody where they warbled it before. A pony--like as possible to the old--is there for Madge; a fete is secretly contrived upon the lawn. You even place the old, familiar books upon the parlor-table. The birthday of your own Madge is approaching,--a _fete_ you never pass by without home rejoicings. You drive over with her upon that morning for another look at the old place; a cloud touches her brow,--but she yields to your wish. An old servant--whom you had known in better days--throws open the gates. ----"It is too, too sad," says Madge. "Let us go back, Clarence, to our own home;--we are happy there." ----"A little farther, Madge." The wife steps slowly over what seems the sepulchre of so many pleasures; the children gambol as of old, and pick flowers. But the mother checks them. "They are not ours now, my children!"