Wife, it is just such little, impatient, waspish words that will tempt your husband to seek quiet, comfort, and appreciation away from your side. No matter if _he_ does “speak just as impatiently as you have done, fifty times a day,” show him a better way. Why retort, or increase the “little shadows,” which you can by gentleness dispel? Yield a little; it is not hard, and you will reap a glorious reward. Is not your husband’s love and confidence worth keeping, by the exercise of a little patience and forbearance? But if not for present joy, to ward off future misery at least, “set a guard over the door of your mouth, that you sin not with your lips”; and so tread life’s pathway with him to whom you have vowed a wife’s fealty that, if called to sit in the desolation of widowhood, there shall not be added to that sorrow the anguish of self-upbraiding for little services impatiently rendered, or love requited by coldness or irritability. When we have passed through all the labors and trials of early life, and in full maturity or just on the decline pause a moment to recall the friends of our youth now gone, and the sweet family ties now broken, how the heart aches with the memory of hasty words or actions, and vainly yearns for one more opportunity for the better performance of our whole duty, in all love, fidelity, and patience! But “God ... pity us all Who vainly the dreams of youth recall; For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: _It might have been!_” LXXX. IN SUCH AN HOUR AS YE THINK NOT. WHEN a young girl is called by the death of her mother to assume the management of the family before her home education has been completed, we know of very few cases which draw so largely on our sympathy. Grief and depression for the loss of a mother is hard enough for the young heart to endure; and added to this, it is no easy thing to accept the responsibility of providing for the comforts of those thus thrown upon her care. All the economical arrangements of the household, the oversight of cooking, even when the labor is done by the hands of a servant; the daily watchings to prevent miscalculations in marketing; the neatness and regularity to be secured in every department,--may seem light to an experienced matron, but are heavy burdens to be laid upon a slight young girl. Yet all this is but a drop, compared with the thought and anxiety she must feel in administering to the health and happiness of her father and of the children, even younger than herself, who will now turn to her for the care once so efficiently and promptly given by the mother. And most likely, until trials came to her, the daughter had never had cares or duties that demanded the exercise of her independent judgment,--her mother being always near to direct and decide.