But the man whose affections are quickened by home-life, does not
confine his sympathies within that comparatively narrow sphere.
His love enlarges in the family, and through the family it expands
into the world. "Love," says Emerson, "is a fire that, kindling
its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught
from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and
enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and
women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole
world and nature with its generous flames."
It is by the regimen of domestic affection that the heart of man
is best composed and regulated. The home is the woman's kingdom,
her state, her world--where she governs by affection, by
kindness, by the power of gentleness. There is nothing which so
settles the turbulence of a man's nature as his union in life with
a highminded woman. There he finds rest, contentment, and
happiness--rest of brain and peace of spirit. He will also often
find in her his best counsellor, for her instinctive tact will
usually lead him right when his own unaided reason might be apt to
go wrong. The true wife is a staff to lean upon in times of trial
and difficulty; and she is never wanting in sympathy and solace
when distress occurs or fortune frowns. In the time of youth, she
is a comfort and an ornament of man's life; and she remains a
faithful helpmate in maturer years, when life has ceased to be an
anticipation, and we live in its realities.
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