Music has a mysterious quality which exalts.  It has been noted that soldiers gladly go to their death under its influence, who otherwise would fight unwillingly.  It is a great producer of thought also.  Some men can write well only under its inspiration.  Educate yourself up in it, therefore.  Do not be content with the simple melodies and old songs.  They will never lose their charm, and ought not; but they are not the best which music has for you.

What I am now insisting upon is a constant and careful nourishment of the mind and soul within you, so that the new home may each day be more and more the dwelling-place of beauty and the abode of real happiness.  You cannot think of the old home without thinking of your mother; and you cannot think of your mother without thinking of the Bible.

A young man and a young woman who are making a new home make an irreparable mistake if they leave out the religious influence.  Both ought to belong to church, and to the same church.  This is a matter of prudence as well as of righteousness; for get it into your consciousness that you must be in harmony with the people of whom you two are one.  Your new home must be in accord with the millions of other homes which make up this Nation; and the American people at bottom are a religious people.

Also, you will find that nothing will please your wife so much as to resolve upon regular church attendance, and then to reduce that resolve to a habit.  It is good for you, too; you feel as though you had taken a moral bath after you get home from service every Sunday.

Of course, being an American and a gentleman, you will have the American gentleman’s conception of all womanhood, and his adoring reverence for the one woman who has blessed him with her life’s companionship.  You will cherish her, therefore, in that way which none but the American gentleman quite understands.  You will be gentle with her, and watchful of her health and happiness.

You will be ever brave and kind, wise and strong, deserving that respect which she is so anxious to accord you; earning that devotion which by the very nature of her being she must bestow on you; winning that admiration which it is the crowning pride of her life to yield to you; and, finally, receiving that care which only her hands can give, and a life-long joy which, increasing with the years, is fullest and most perfect when both your heads are white and your mutual steps no longer wander from the threshold of that “new home” which you built in the beginning of your lives, and which is now the “old home” to your children, who beneath its roof “rise up and call you blessed.”

V

THE YOUNG LAWYER AND HIS BEGINNINGS

It used to be a part of the creed of a certain denomination that a man should not be admitted to the ministry who had not received his “call.”  It was necessary that he should hear the Voice speaking with his tongue, and saying, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel.”