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Show LONG, LONG AGO. A contented heart is better than great riches. Many a wealthy man looks back to hours in his early life when he was far happier than now. A millionaire gives a leaf from his own experience. I'll tell you when was the happiest hour of my life. At the age of twenty-one I had saved eight hundred dollars. I was earning five hundred dollars a year, and my father did not take it from me, only requiring that I should pay board. At the age of twenty-two I had secured a pretty cottage, just outside of the city. I was able to pay two-thirds of the value down, and also to furnish it respectably. I was married on Sunday - a Sunday in June - at my father's house. My wife had come to me poor in purse but rich in the wealth of her womanhood. The Sabbath and the Sabbath night we passed beneath my father's roof, and on Monday morning I went to work, leaving my mother and sisters to help in preparing my home. On Monday evening, when the labors of the day were done, I went not to the paternal shelter as in the past, but to my own house - my own home. The holy atmosphere of that hour seems to surround me even now in my memory. I opened the door to the cottage and entered. I laid my hat on the little stand in the hall, and passed on to the kitchen - our kitchen and dining-room were all one then. I pushed open the kitchen door. The table was set against the wall; the evening meal was ready, prepared by the hands of her who had come to be my helpmate in deed as well as in name; and by the table, with a throbbing, expectant look upon her lovely, loving face, stood my wife. I tried to speak, and could not. I could only clasp the waiting angel to my bosom, thus showing to her the ecstatic burden of my heart. The years have passed, long, long years, and wealth has flowed in upon me, and I am honored and envied; but as true as heaven, I would give it all, every dollar, for the joy of the hour that June evening in the long, long ago! |