Show THE DEAR OLD WIFE Her Heart Aches with Longing for One Word of to ve Why should thewoman who has been the faithful wife of years need other beautifying appliances that the remembrances remem-brances of all that she has been and done in those years She and her husband hus-band are growing old together j she does not love him an iota the less for his gravness his baldness his pallor his graven lines j under them all she sees the man who won her heart so many years ago In his taste for beauty his refinement and cultivated senseso much more acute than hers that he alone of the two must needs see change and feel loss and dissatisfaction and manifest the feeling Yet how many days there are whether it be from this feeling or from simple indifference that the oldwife old-wife wearies and her heart aches with longing for one word of all the old words that used to be poured in her ear for one action that has no other end or aim in view but the evident promotion of her happiness No matter how old she is be she even all her threesore years and ten the woman does not live who can live happily without love and if she has in apparent amity without his love and some proof of it She knows that there have been old lovers long married She remembers the ballad of John Anderson my Jo John which never moved her when she was young but now seems to haye been written for herself her-self and she sighs for some expression from her husband that shall make her state resemble that of those old lovers It is the indifference that breaks her heart she does not know in her darkness dark-ness concerning it and the reasons for it how soon it may turn to hate she does not know but she would rather it were hate and done with Without that love which has been the breath of her life in the past she must fall or sink and wither into selfcentred indifference indif-ference herself with it she could still lift her portion of the world like Atlas She is singularly unselfish if the want of it does not make her review her life and all its labors and sacrifices and arouse an indignation over the injustice of her lot in which either the flame of her life or of her love must burn out It would cost the husband of this old wife a man who doubtless does kindness to othersbut little thought or exertion to manifest h love that maybe warm beneath be-neath its crust brief mentions of gratification grati-fication or of pain now and then smiles confidences turning for sympathy when together movements of oldfashioned courtesy when with others all this would not greatly impair his own powers through exertion and it would raise her again to her proud place among happy wives whose love and whose receipt of love outlast their very life Fortunate for the world is it that if there are some who do differently the greater number of husbands see under the mask that age has built the woman of their love and would utter for her epitaph no worse words than Und rneath this stone doth lie I As much virtue as could die Which when alive did vigor give To as much beauty as could live |