Domestic Happiness - Page 2

be feared, have just reason to exclaim,

"'Once to prevent my wishes Philo flew; But time, that alters all, has altered you.'

"It is, perhaps, not to be expected that a man can retain through life that assiduity by which he pleases for a day or a month. Care, however, should be taken that he do not so far relax his vigilance as to induce a belief that his affection is diminished. Few disquietudes occur in domestic life which might not have been prevented; and those so frequently witnessed, generally arise from a want of attention to those mutual endearments which all have in their power to perform, and which, as they are essential to the preservation of happiness, should never be intentionally omitted."

This witness, dear reader, is true. The neglect of those little attentions which every married couple have it in their power to show to each other, daily, hourly, is a sure method of undermining domestic happiness. Let every married reader bear this in mind, and reflect upon it; for it is an undeniable truth.

It was a full quarter of a century ago that the writer first saw the pair of engravings which he has described. They were hanging over the fire-place of a newly-married cottager. "There," said she, laughing, as she pointed to the second picture; "you see what I have to expect."

She did not expect it, though! Such an attentive, kind, and self-denying lover, as her "old man," as she called him in sport, had been, would never change into a morose brute, who could suffer his wife to climb over an awkward stile without help, and scold her for her clumsiness.

Reader, not many months since we saw poor Mary, prematurely gray and time-stricken. For years she has been living apart from her husband, her children scattered abroad in the world, and she is sad and solitary. And thus it was:--He, the trusted one, tired of being the fond lover of the picture, soon began to show himself the husband. She, the confiding one, stunned by some instances of neglect, reproached and taunted. He resented these reproaches as unjust, and to prove them so, redoubled his inattentiveness to her, absented himself from home, and bestowed his attentions elsewhere. She copied his example, and by way of punishment in kind, lavished her smiles and kindnesses in other quarters. He--but why go on? Years--sad years of crimination and recrimination, of provocation, and bitter reproaches, and suspicion, and mutual jealousy, and dislike, and hatred, wore away. At length they parted. What became of the pair of pictures, we often wonder.

"For about two years after I was married," says Cobbett, in his Advice to a Husband, "I retained some of my military manners, and used to romp most famously with the girls that came in my way; till one day, at Philadelphia, my wife said to me, in a very gentle manner 'Don't do that, I do not like it.' That was quite