lost it in your service.  She has come honestly by her wrinkles.  She got them in the sick-bed, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the bed of your sick children, by the grave of your child, by painful night-watches and overtaxing day toils, by your harsh words, and by your heartless treatment.  This is all she has in return for her beauty and youth and cheerful mind and happy disposition, which she laid at your feet when you asked her to join her destiny with yours.  A little courtesy, a kind attention, a bouquet of flowers, a small token, a word of appreciation and of encouragement is not much to you, but it is a world to your wife.  Your smile is all the reward she craves.  Her heart thirsts for it, and when given, its effect upon her soul is as the refreshing dew upon the withered grass.  It is a mistake to believe that she can draw in her married life on your love-deposits during courtship.  If love is to prosper, the supply must be ever fresh.  The love of the past will never satisfy the need of the present.  Love constantly and carefully cultivated will increase its blessings as fruit trees double their bearing under the hand of the gardener.  It will be killed, as will the fruit tree, if the gardener’s hand grows neglectful and noxious influences are permitted to impede its growth.  Let your wife be your helpmate and not your housekeeper.  She shares your sorrows, your defeats, let her also share your thoughts and plans.  Unbosom your thoughts to her.  Lay open to her your heart and soul.  Trust her with your confidence, she trusts you with hers.  The men who succeed are those who make confidants of their wives.  The marriages that are happy are those where husbands and wives have no thoughts apart.  The children that are well raised are those that have had the example of loving and confiding parents before them.  Proud of your confidence, she will labor to deserve it.  She will study to please you.  In your prosperity she will be your delight; your stay and comfort in your adversity.  She will return your confidence and affection in full measure.  Gloom will vanish from the hearth, and happiness will hold dominion within the home.  “Her children will rise up before her and call her happy; and her husband will sing aloud her praises.”

Marriage is, perhaps, the only game of chance ever invented at which it is possible for both players to lose.  Too often, after many sugar-coated words, and several premeditated misdeals on both sides, one draws a blank and the other a booby.  After patiently angling in the matrimonial pool, one draws a sunfish and the other a minnow.  One expects to capture a demigod, who hits the earth only in high places, but when she has thoroughly analyzed him, she finds nothing genuine, only a wilted chrysanthemum and a pair of patent leather shoes, while he in return expected to wed a wingless angel who would make his Edenic bower one long drawn out sigh of aesthetic bliss.  The result is very often that he is tied