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plain in our intercourse with men; it may account for the seeming indifference with which we are occasionally regarded. Still, a woman does not like to be even apparently neglected by her husband; without being at all exacting she may naturally claim from him something in return for the unceasing flow of her affection towards him; she may be pardoned if she feel that she would like a more equable distribution of his regards, that she would dispense with a little occasional fervour, if she could thereby secure a constant supply of kindly consideration and a quiet though unvarying tenderness. Of course there are some women who must be very troublesome to their husbands; they demand to be made a fuss with under any circumstances; they are never content unless their wants are being supplied and their whims consulted, unless something is being done for their advantage or their gratification. They must be petted, caressed, fondled incessantly; they require a sort of worship which few men are capable of rendering, and failing continually to gain their ends, which are too often purely selfish, and being frequently disappointed, they grow cross and fractious, and gradually become soured in temper, with every danger of degenerating into something as infinitely below "rubies" as it is possible to conceive-into worthless pebbles and sharp flints, impeding the progress and making sadly rougher and harder the path of the men whom they profess to love.

Such a woman is foolish, irrational, and exigeante with a vengeance; but it is not of such I speak,-rather of the wives who well deserve to be appraised at the value of true rubies,-the wives in whom their husbands may safely trust, who will do him good, not evil, all the days of his life, who lay their hands to the spindle and hold the distaff, who reach forth their hands to the poor and needy, whose households are clothed with scarlet, whose clothing is silk and purple, whose husbands are known in the gates, and among the elders of the land, wives in whom are strength and honour, who open their mouth with wisdom and in whose tongue is the law of kindness, who, looking well to the ways of their households, eat not the bread of idleness, whose children arise up and call them blessed, whose husbands praise them.

Surely these wives, whose price indeed is "far above rubies," deserve husbands who are better than diamonds. If the husband's price be not above that of cheap garnets or of Scotch pebbles, the value of the wife will be liable to deteriorate, and to sink towards his level. One of the greatest authorities of our day has pro. nounced,

"As the husband is, the wife is."

And to a great extent there can be no doubt that he is right.

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Men, even the very best of them, are too often thoughtlessly unkind; they would shudder at the notion of cruelty, yet they contrive to inflict very severe pain on the women they love supremely. They do love them,-let that never be forgotten; but they behave sometimes in such a way that nothing but the strongest faith can believe in the existence of the love which is so seldom and so inadequately manifested. The man has won his prize; he has gained all he sought; the woman is his, and his only, for life his in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, his till death do them part. He is secure of his wife's affections, as he ought to be secure; but he relies notwithstanding on that security, as he ought not to rely. Without intending any slight he too frequently neglects her; insensibly he grows colder towards her; insensibly he cultivates an undemonstrative temperament till he really fails-all the while meaning no unkindness, in the delicate courtesy and chivalric observances which the highest type of men hold to be the prerogative of women.

Why a man should be ruder to his wife than to any other woman it is difficult to imagine; why he should slight and appear indifferent to her whom he really loves above all other women is a problem by no means easy of solution, and yet it is one which continually lies open before us.

It may be urged that women-even sensible women-are too often romantic, and foolishly expect what never can be theirs. But granted that women are romantic, as, indeed, more or less they are, if they be good for anything, is that to be numbered among their faults? Is there to be no romance in marriage? Is it all to be put away when the wedding-tour is over, or, at the latest, when the first anniversary of the wedding-day comes round? Is courtship to be a poem, and married life a piece of unmitigated prose? Is the actual never to yield to the ideal? Is it to be all keeping house and going to the City, paying bills, and nursing babies? Must the husband be always absorbed in business, or in papers and magazines, and must the wife be wholly given up to household cares? Women, I think, are not unreasonable when they look for a due proportion of romance in their married lives. It is not soft sentimentalism they require, not idle flatteries nor foolish compliments, but a ready and unfailing sympathy, an appreciation of their efforts to please, a recognition of their own love, a rendering of those small but sweet attentions which prove that they are thought of and remembered with affection-that deep down in the husband's inmost heart is a quiet but ceaseless undercurrent of strong, pure love, flowing calmly on under all the troubled waves and raging tides of his busy and oft-perplexed life in the great, bustling world outside.

Yes! women-that is good women-will bear anything and brave anything if they are quite certain that they are loved. That knowledge will support them under a thousand trials. It helps them in their toil; it cheers them under physical suffering, it supports and nerves them to continued effort, when otherwise they would sink under their load of cares, and their burden of making both ends meet when funds are at low ebb. Poverty, sickness, privations, even occasional harshness, may be borne without repining, if only the wife knows that she is still loved, still dearer than in the blissful bridal days when her life lay before her, an alluring but untried path.

Nothing kills love like coldness and indifference! The tender plant, though it droop under the fury of the tempest, lifts up its fearless head again, when the winds sink into zephyrs, and the rain ceases, and the sun comes out once more. And it unfolds its leaves,

and puts forth its buds, and expands fresh blossoms to the sweet, soft summer air, and the life that is in it is vigorous as ever; nay, perhaps more vigorous, more healthy for the tossing winds and the downpouring rain. But let the cold North-easter blow day after day, let the sun hide itself behind impenetrable clouds, let icy blasts sweep over the devoted plant, and it shrinks and droops in all its fibres, and slowly withers to its root. The weather may change, but all too late; the sun may shine, but not for it; the South winds may blow, but never thrill the congealed sap within its veins; the long cold winter has killed it-it has been gradually frozen to death!

So, too, love that has survived the storms of life for many years, that has smiled most brightly when the lift was darkest, that has sung its sweetest melodies amid the rolling of the thunder, and stood unscathed amid the lightning flashes, perishes in the dreary winter of icy indifference and cold neglect. It is affirmed that love cannot die, that true, pure love is immortal and indestructible, that chains cannot bind it, that perils cannot frighten it, that tyranny cannot subdue it, that many waters cannot drown it, that death itself can never conquer it. Yes! but things can be killed even when they will not die of themselves. You may cut down the stately oak in its prime when it might have spread its mighty branches over the forest for a thousand years; you may snap the flower-stalk, and so blight the unfolding rose that would have gladdened you with its fragrant, beauteous bloom for many a weary day. And it is well to bear in mind that though it is not difficult to take life, it is quite impossible to restore it. The butterfly that you carelessly crush as you pursue it can never again spread its painted wings in the bright sunshine. Too late you may bring back to kindly shelter and warmth the plant you left to blossom in

the cold, and the love that you have killed by persistent neglect and long chilling indifference will not be restored for all your prayers, and tears, and late but vain remorse.

With all our faults and all our follies, of which we are so constantly reminded, we women can and do love truly and wisely and well. There may be some "girls of the period" whom the period has not caricatured-I am afraid, as I look abroad, there are many; there may be here and there "frisky matrons" by whom the sanctities of marriage are as little comprehended as is the differential calculus; but of this I am quite sure-there are good wives innumerable. As there were seven thousand in Israel who had never bowed the knee to Baal, while Elijah imagined himself to be the sole worshipper of Jehovah, so are there countless women whose price is far above rubies, but whose worth is known only to those to whom they belong, and with whose lives their own are inseparably blended. The most valuable things are not always the most conspicuous, besides which some people do not know a jewel when they see it, some cannot discriminate between mere paste and the real, precious ruby, and they would be quite as likely as not to cast the gem away if they had it and to pick up in its stead a worthless piece of coloured glass.

There might be more wives than there are whose portraiture answers to that of King Lemuel; let us hope that in the good time coming there will be more and more. And let us also trust that those who seek in us something so inestimable and so perfect -and which they are quite right to seek-will also recognise their own responsibilities, and reflect that if to them we are to be "far above rubies," they to us should be better far than diamonds.

HESTER GOLDERING'S SACRIFICE.

BY MAGGIE SYMINGTON.

CHAPTER XIII.-THE CAPTAIN OF THE ""

TRAVAILLEUR."

WHILE Craigdallie contains the guests of Lord Haig, and the sunshine lies in sheets of gold over all the purple hills and upon the glassy bosom of the lake near the mansion, other scenes that have to do equally with the thread of our story are being enacted several hundreds of miles distant in that small market-town where we first made the acquaintance of the reader. The breezy heights of Craigdallie and the spacious accommodation of its princely chambers have made us somewhat fastidious, and the small, poky

rooms of the cottage in Fair View-terrace seem hot and stuffy in the bright September sunshine. It is within such thin and badlybuilt walls as those that one feels the miseries of the extremes of heat and cold; the winter winds penetrate through every crevice, and the damp creeps through the slightly-put-together bricks and mortar when it is the season of frost and snow; but when the dogstar rules, and for long after, the fiery sun-rays strike down upon the thinly-covered roof, and the fierce heat changes all the small rooms into amateur bakeries adapted for the broiling of human slaves.

"Whew!" cries Charlie Goldering, who has had some slight experience of the sun's power in the tropics, "how hot it is! Come out into the garden, mother; I can talk to you better there. Men ought to be hung for building such hotbeds as these. I should like to nail up the builders in one of these small ovens during the reign of the dog-star, and supply them with scanty driblets of water by means of a teaspoon."

Hester Goldering smiled a little sadly as she took her son's arm and walked out with him through the passage into the narrow strip of garden at the back of the house, whence there was a view across a meadow to where the course of a river, in this neighbourhood nothing better than a narrow stream, was marked by pollard willows.

"I never felt the continues the sailor. you endure them ?"

heat greater in India than I have done here,” "These miserable houses! Mother, how do

"If you live to my age, Charlie, you will find that there are greater miseries to be endured in this world than those arising out of badly-constructed houses."

"Doubtless I shall, but because there are great miseries under the sun is no reason why men should go and add to them by artificial means. I should say it is just the contrary, and because we have miseries to bear comfortable houses should be given us in which to endure them."

"But unfortunately it is not the ought to be's' that govern the universe. If nothing would satisfy us but what we believe to be our deserts we should be always miserable. It is best to learn to be satisfied with what we have, and not to crave for the impossible."

"But, mother, it would be so easy to have things different. Why does not Government, for the sake of the national credit, stop the running up of these artistically abominable terraces?' How can people living inside the hideous brick boxes' of which they are composed ever have an artistic or beautiful thought in their heads? It is death to the souls of the people. I should eat out

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