“‘It is no secret, doctor,’ he replied.  ’I have one of the best of wives; and, when I go to work, she always has a kind word of encouragement for me; and, when I go home, she meets me with a smile and a kiss; and then tea is sure to be ready, and she has done so many little things through the day to please me that I cannot find it in my heart to speak an unkind word to anybody.’”

Some of the happiest homes I have ever been in, ideal homes, where intelligence, peace, and harmony dwell, have been homes of poor people.  No rich carpets covered the floors; there were no costly paintings on the walls, no piano, no library, no works of art.  But there were contented minds, devoted and unselfish lives, each contributing as much as possible to the happiness of all, and endeavoring to compensate by intelligence and kindness for the poverty of their surroundings.  “One cheerful, bright, and contented spirit in a household will uplift the tone of all the rest.  The keynote of the home is in the hand of the resolutely cheerful member of the family, and he or she will set the pitch for the rest.”

“Young men,” it is said, “are apt to be overbearing, imperious, brusque in their manner; they need that suavity of manner, and urbanity of demeanor, gracefulness of expression and delicacy of manner, which can only be gained by association with the female character, which possesses the delicate instinct, ready judgment, acute perceptions, wonderful intuition.  The blending of the male and female characteristics produces the grandest character in each.”

The woman who has what Helen Hunt so aptly called “a genius for affection,”—­she, indeed, is queen of the home.  “I have often had occasion,” said Washington Irving, “to remark the fortitude with which woman sustains the most overwhelming reverses of fortune.  Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character that at times it approaches sublimity.”

If a wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so that it shall be the cleanest, sweetest, cheerfulest place her husband can find refuge in,—­a retreat from the toils and troubles of the outer world,—­then God help the poor man, for he is virtually homeless.  “Home-keeping hearts,” said Longfellow, “are happiest.”  What is a good wife, a good mother?  Is she not a gift out of heaven, sacred and delicate, with affections so great that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their bound; fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and society and the world; of such value that no one can appreciate it, unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or unless, in some great crisis of life, when all else failed him, he had a wife to reenforce him with a faith in God that nothing could disturb?