The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our CitiesOsgood, Samuel
Religion
The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities
Osgood, Samuel
Christian life; Conduct of life
We add now a second duty of married persons--one that has a very prosaic
sound, touching a matter so near the springs of feeling. We say that
husband and wife should be reasonable--reasonable that they may be true in
fact as well as in purpose. Feeling of itself, even when healthy, is a
poor guide, sadly blind without reason. Whether it go with love or
indifference, folly carries misery into the home. The proverb is true
enough--
"A stone is heavy and the sand weighty,
But a fool's wrath is heavier than both;"
and we might add, a fool's love is quite as heavy as his wrath. We speak
not of the folly, which is a natural misfortune, but that of minds
befooling themselves by levity, or dissipation, or idleness. Nothing
wears better than good sense, and nothing is more essential to permanent
congeniality and usefulness. It is sometimes a stern censor, but only
because it wishes to be an honest friend. Let married persons take it for
their counsellor and it will settle for them many questions, which inflame
self-will and disturb love itself. They need above all others to be
reasonable, to look to reason with all its revealed lights as the
interpreter of God's will to them, and of their own relation to each
other. It is a great thing for them to start in life with reasonable views
of the most common-place arrangements of the household. How much
disappointment, and bitterness, and sin, come from unreasonable views of
expense, and who will undertake to estimate the amount of domestic misery
resulting from household extravagance? The dress of many a wife, and the
wine account of many a husband has been the ruin of the family. Let every
couple start with a fair understanding as to what they can afford to
spend, and keep sacredly within the limit. If the world laughs at their
simplicity, they can well afford to laugh at the world's folly, and time
will be very likely to put the laugh upon the right side. Much might be
said of the deplorable influence of the extravagant notions of most young
women in preventing thoughtful men from taking the risks of marriage, and
we hazard nothing in saying that the worst vices of cities are closely
connected with the growth of feminine extravagance. America will lose her
birthright and have no trace of the old domestic order, if the folly runs
through the land, and most girls are brought up to exact more expense
than the average returns of industry and talent can earn.
Good sense, that honest counsellor, will save the parties from all
controversy about prerogative, will interpret their peculiar jurisdictions
duly; teaching the man to take the lead without magisterial assumption, to
be the guardian without playing the tyrant; teaching the woman to follow
his fortunes without being his slave, and to accept his deference without
becoming his imbecile toy; exhibiting both in their likeness and
difference, equals and not equals, so that the twain are made one by a due
balance of gifts and harmony of contrasts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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