A WHISPER TO THE WIFE. "Think not, the husband gain'd, that all is done, CHAPTER I.. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. GENTLE friend, my whisper to your husband is ended. From you a moment's attention is now claimed by a widowed wife, whose bridal morning rose as bright as yours; whose youthful heart loved "with all a woman's love;" and who anxiously desires to secure for her interesting sisters, that first and most important of all a wife's possessions-the confidence and affection of her husband. You are now become a wife; and sacred and important are the duties you have to fulfil. Your husband has bestowed on you the highest distinction he could confer; he has selected you from the world; and the claim he has can only cease at death! Be it your care never to let him feel this as a claim, but by your kindness and gentleness make him feel that the law of love is perfect liberty. A bride, wherever she appears, is ever considered an object of importance and a subject for remark. "Have you seen the bride?" is the eager and general question: and what she does, what she says, what she wears, and how she looks, swells the insignificant chat of every gossip's visit. Let the notice which you thus excite make you particularly observant of your manner and conduct; and give the busy whisperer no food for a new sarcasm in the next importation of tittle-tattle. A bride is generally (indeed I think always) proud of the new character she has entered on; and, unless she is a woman of sense, she is too fond of exhibiting the love she has inspired. Pursue a different course; let your manner to your husband be kind and good-humoured, frank and unaffected; but sacred to the hours of retirement be those expressions and that display of endearment, which, used in public, argue in loud terms a want of true delicacy, and are ever particularly disagreeable to the spectator. Bridal decorum is as charming as virgin modesty. The first inquiry of a woman after marriage should be, "How shall I continue the love I have inspired?-how shall I preserve the heart I have won?" Gentle lady, at the present moment your husband thinks you the loveliest, the gentlest of beings. Destroy not the illusion: be lovely still; be gentle still. The long and dreary road that lies through the wilderness of life is stretched before you; and by a chain, the links of which no human power can break, you are bound to a companion with whom, hand in hand, you must walk through this long, long road. For the sake then of peace, for the sake of happiness, for the sake of self, (that most powerful feeling,) brighten the way by endeavouring to make yourself amiable and pleasing to him. The great Dr. Johnson, with his usual strength of expression, laments, in the fol lowing words, the contrasted manner which frequently occurs before and after marriage. -"One would think, the whole endeavour of both parties during the time of courtship is to hinder themselves from being knownto disguise their natural temper and real desires in hypocritical imitation, studied compliance, and continued affectation. From the time that their love is avowed, neither sees the other but in a mask; and the cheat is often managed on both sides with so much art, and discovered afterwards with so much abruptness, that each has reason to suspect that some transformation. has happened on the wedding-night, and that by a strange imposture, as in the case of Jacob, one has been courted and another married." "However discreet your choice has been, time and circumstances alone can sufficiently develop your husband's character: by degrees the discovery will be made that you have married a mortal, and that the object of your affections is not entirely free from the infirmities of human nature. Then it is, that by an impartial survey of your own character, your disappointment may be moderated; and your love, so far from declining, may acquire additional tenderness, from the con sciousness that there is room for mutual forbearance." How admirably has the poet Cowper enforced the necessity of mutual forbearance in the following lines: "Alas! and is domestic strife, |