"You see, John has his worries down-town--not so many now as he used to have, I am thankful to say; and I have tried always to make his home bright for him so that he could forget unpleasant things. I hope you will always do that, too; it is a wife's duty, I think. You will forgive my telling you these things, won't you? You see I am so much older than you are, and I have known John for so many years. I have found that it relieves his feelings sometimes to tell me his troubles and to talk over things with me. Of course, I don't know much about business, and I suppose that what I say is of no value; but it soothes him to have sympathy. So I hope you will never be impatient when he wants to tell you about his partners and the clerks and things of that sort. I have seen women foolish enough not to want to listen when their husbands talked about business. I do hope that you are wiser, or, at any rate, that you will take advice from an old woman like me, thinking only of the happiness of the man you have promised to love, honor, and obey. You will learn in time how good John is. Perhaps you may think you know now--but you can't know that as well as I do. "You see I am older than John--not so much older, either, only a little more than two years. He doesn't like me to admit it, but it is true; and of late I have been afraid that everybody could see it, for I am past forty now and I feel very old sometimes, while John is as young as ever. He looks just as he did twenty years ago; he has not a gray hair in his head yet. He comes up-stairs to me, after he gets back from the office, with the same boyish step I know so well. "He was only a boy when I first saw him in the little village school-house. His family had just moved into our neighborhood, and the school he had been to before was not very good, and so I was able to help him with his lessons. The memory of that first winter when we were boy and girl together has always been very precious to me; and I can see him now as he used to come into the school, panting with his hard run to get there in time. "I don't know when it was that I began to love him, but it was long before he had grown to be a man. That early love of mine gave me many a sorrowful hour in those days, for there were other girls who saw how handsome John was. One girl there was he used to say was pretty, but I never could see it, for she had red hair and freckles--but perhaps John said this to tease me, for he was always fond of a joke. This girl made up to him, and John came near marrying her; but fortunately a new minister came to town and she gave up John and took him. So John came back to me, and that spring we were married.