Now, don't think after years of neglect, that because you have now made no end of improvement all is going to be as it used. Don't think it. You let in the thin end of the wedge over that stray hair, and things have gone gradually wrong. Just so: and you must by slow, painful degrees, get that wedge gradually worked back a little bit and a little bit, while all your patience and perseverance will be so sorely tried, that in sheer despair you'll often say, "There: it's of no use!" But it is of use, and of the greatest of use, and even though he may not show it, Tom can see the difference and feel those household spirits tugging at his heart-strings, and saying, when at public-house, "Come away!" in tones that he finds it hard to resist. Brutal men there are in plenty, we know, but, God be thanked for it! how many of our men have the heart in the right place, and you women of England can touch it if you will. Say your home, through long neglect, has become bare and beggarly. Never mind; make the best of it. It's wonderful what a ha'porth of hearthstone, a ha'porth of blacklead, and a good heart will do. And that isn't all, you foolish woman; for there's a bright and glorious light that can shine out of a loving woman's face and make the humblest home a palace with its happy radiance. Say your room is bare. What then? Does Tom go to a well-furnished place to spend his money? No; but to a room of hard, bare forms and settles, and common tables sticky and gum-ringed, while the floor, well sanded, grits beneath his feet. Go to, Betsy, never mind the bareness, for you have a glorifying sun within you, whose radiance can brighten the roughest, thorniest way. Look out here at this bare court, dull, dingy, filthy, frowsy, misery stricken. The sun comes from behind yon cloud, and lo! the place is altered so that even your very heart leaps at the change, and your next breath is a sigh of pleasure. And have you not for years been shrouding your face in clouds and keeping them lingering about your home? Thousands of you have: take heart, and let the sun appear everywhere that Tom will cast his eye. Why, the reflection shall so gladden your own spirit that it shall leap for joy, while you know within yourself that you have done your duty. Young wives, beware--take heed of the first stray hair and jealously prison it again, for by that single frail filament perhaps hangs yours, your husband's, your children's future welfare; so never let Tom be less proud of you than in the days of old. What is a wife? The prop or stay of a man, the balance that shall steady him through life, and make him--the weaker vessel--give forth when struck a sonorous, honest, clear tone. _He_ is the weaker vessel, and yours are the hands to hold him fast.