Show r r. r r I t I ri Few great men have paid more enthusiastic enthusiastic enthusiastic en en- tributes to their wives than Tom Hood and probably few wives wives wives' have better deserved such homage You will think he wrote to to he her in one of his letters that I am more foolish than any boy oy lover and I plead guilty For never was was wasa a wooer so young of heart and so steeped I Ilove in inlove il love as I but it is a love sanctified and strengthened b by long years years of experience May May God ever bless my darling the darling the sweetest most helpful angel who ever stooped to bless a man Has there ever we wonder a wife to whom a more delicate and beautiful tribute was paid than those verses of which the burden is I love thee I love thee Us all that I Ican Ican can say I want thee much Nathaniel Hawthorne Haw Haw- thorne wrote to his wife many years after his long patience had won won for fur him the flower that was lent from froia heaven to show the possibilities of the human soul Thou are the 0 only 1 person in the world the world that ever Was ne necessary essary to me And nd now I am only II myself when thou art within my reach Thou art an unspeakably beloved woman I Sophia Hawthorne was little better I than a chronic invalid and it may be that this physical weakness woke all allI I the deep chivalry and tenderness of the man And he raped reaped a rich re- re war for or an an alm Sr unrivaled unrivaled devotion devotion devo devo- tion in the here atmos atmosphere of love and happiness and inspiration n with which his delicate wife always surrounded him The wedded The wedded life ite of Wordsworth with his cousin the phantom of delight was a poem more exquisitely beautiful than any his pen ever wrote Mrs Wordsworth was never fair to look upon but she had that priceless and rarer beauty of soul which made her life Ufe a center of sweetness to all allaround allaround allaround around her All that she has been baen to me the poet once said in his latter latter lat lat- ter days none but God and myself can ever ver know and it would be difficult difficult dif dif- to find a more touching and beautiful picture in the gallery of great mens men's lives ives than that of Wordsworth Wordsworth Wordsworth Words Words- worth and his wife both bowed under under- the burden of many years and almost blind walking ing hand hancl in hand tog together ther therIn In the garden with n all l th the the blissful blissful abr ab- ab r sorption and tender confidence of youthful lovers It k t. t nev never r ne needed ded the welding touch of a great sorrow to make the lives of Archbishop Tait Talt and his devoted wife ife a perfect whole Speaking of her many years after she had been tal taken en from him he said To part from her if only for a day was a pain only less intense than the pleasure with which I returned to her and when I took her with me it was one of the purest joys given to man to watch the meeting between her and our children When David Livingstone had passed his thirtieth birthday with barely a thought for such an indulgence as wooing and wedding he her declared humorously that when he was a little less busy he would send home an advertisement advertisement advertisement ad ad- for a wife preferably a decent sort of widow and yet so unconsciously unconsciously unconsciously un un- consciously near was his fate that only a year later he was introducing his hiss bride Mary Moffat to the home he had built largely with his own hands at From that supremely supremely su prem ly happy the day when eighteen years later he received her last faint whisperings at no man ever had a more self brave devoted wife than the missionary's d daughter In fact they were more like two happy light hearted ligh hearted children than th-n sedate se se- sedate sedate date married folk tolk- and under the thEY magic of their merriment the h hardships hard l rd ships and dangers of life to n the heart of the dark darl continent wei ft stripped of all their terrors Jean Paul Richter confessed that he never even een suspected the potentialities potential potential- of human happiness until he met Caroline Mayer that sweetest and most gifted of women women he was fast approaching his fortieth year an and that he had no monopoly of the resultant happiness is proved by his wife's declaration that ll Richter ichter is the purest the holiest the most godlike man that lives To be the wife of such sucha a a man is the she greatest glory that can fall faU to a woman while of his wife R Richter once wrote I thought when I married her that I had sounded the the- depths depth of human love but I have since r realized how unfathomable is the heart in which a anoble anoble anoble noble woman has h hr her r shrine |