The Secret of a Happy Home (1896)

sently becomes the only woman in the universe to him is goodly to view, if not actually beautiful. Goodliness being largely contingent upon apparel, it follows tha

nt to what occupies so much of other women's thoughts, if she do not always appear in her lover's presence neatly and-to the best of her ability-becomingly attired. She quickly acquaints herself with his taste

, putting closets to rights, laying carpets, hanging pictures, clearing away straw, sawdust, and what in that day corresponded with jute-dusting and shelving books-and performing the hundred other duties contingent upon sitting down in the modest cottage hired by her bank

apron before her, draw a pair of his discarded gloves with truncated fingers upon her hands, and be too tired at night to do more than boil the kettle for the cup of tea wh

and the under sides of the sleeves, and, watch as she may, catch spots in the kitchen. She considers,-being lovingly determined to help, not hinder her mate,-that his purse must purchase new garments when her trousseau is worn out, and she saves her best clothes for "occasions." John, being her husband, is no longer an occasion. Dark p

o each of the dishes served up with secret pride for his consumption, may have gone a wealth of love and earnest desire that would have set up ten poets in sonnets and madrigals. Because her hands are roughened and her complexion muddied by her work, and-in the knowledge that dishes are to be washed and the table re-set for breakfast, and the kitchen cleared up after he has been regaled-she has slipped on a dark frock

hair becomingly arranged, her working-gown as neat as she can keep it, and relieved before John comes in by clean collar or ruching and a smooth white apron. It is altogether possible for the woman who "does her own work" to be as "well set-up"-t

o him whose fortune she has elected to share, that when her handsome gowns are no longer wearable she must replace lace with cotton lawns, and silk with all-wool merino or serge, she devises excuses for sparing the costly fabrics-pretexts which, to his shame it is said, he is prone to misunderstand. If men such as he could guess at the repressed longings for the brave array of other times that assail the wearers of well-saved-theref