'"Well then, until you see him do it to me, never do it to your sister.Men are gentle and polite to women, and little boys should be gentle and polite to little girls."The children ran off to their play, and Helen said, "Now how different that is from my mother's management with us! She always made us girls yield to the boys.They would not have thought they could go up to bed unless one of us got a candle for them.""That, I suppose, is the reason then that Ernest expected me to wait upon him after we were married," I replied."I was a little stiff about yielding 'to him, for besides mother's precepts, I was influenced by my father's example.He was so courteous, treating her with as much respect as if she were a queen, and yet with as much love as if were always a girl.I naturally expected the like from my husband.""You must have been disappointed then," she said.
"Yes, I was.It cost me a good many pouts and tears of which I am now ashamed.And Ernest seldom annoys me now with the little neglects that I used to make so much of.""Sometimes I think there are no 'little' neglects," said Helen."It takes less than nothing to annoy us.""And it takes more than everything to please us!" I cried."But Ernest and I had one stronghold to which we always fled in our troublous times, and that was our love for each other.No matter how he provoked me by his little heedless ways, I had to forgive him because I loved him so.And he had to forgive me my faults for the same reason.""I had no idea husbands and wives loved each other so," said Helen.
"I thought they got over it as soon as their cares and troubles came on, and just jogged on together, somehow."We both laughed and she went on.
"If I thought I should be as happy as you are, I should be tempted to be married myself.""Ah, I thought your time would come!" I cried.
"Don't ask me any questions," she said, her pretty face growing prettier with a bright; warm glow."Give me advice instead; for instance, tell me how I can be sure that if I love a man I shall go on loving him through all the wear and tear of married life and how can I be sure he can and will go on loving me?""Well, then, setting aside the fact that you are both lovable and loving, I will say this: Happiness, in other words love, in married life is not a mere accident.When the union has been formed, as most Christian unions are, by God Himself, it is His intention and His will that it shall prove the unspeakable joy of both husband and wife, and become more and more so from year to year.But we are imperfect creatures, wayward and foolish as little children, horribly unreasonable, selfish and willful.We are not capable of enduring the shock of finding at every turn that our idol is made of clay, and that it is prone to tumble off its pedestal and lie in the dust, till we pick it up and set it in its place again.I was struck with Ernest's asking in the very first prayer he offered in my presence, after our marriage, that God would help us love each other.I felt that love was the very foundation on which I was built, and that there was no danger that I should ever fall short in giving to my husband all he wanted, in full measure.But as he went on day after day repeating this prayer, and I naturally made it with him, I came to see that this most precious of earthly blessings had been and must be God's gift, and that while we both looked at it in that light, and felt our dependence on Him for it, we might safely encounter together all the assaults made upon us by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
