Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1875-10-15
DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE


understood it perfectly. She could not
lean on his arm, but she leaned on his
heart all the same. They had grown aged
together and he shot ahead little; but
they must not mistake them, it was all
right So it would be with these twain in
the far-away Eastern Valley. They would
keep together, and when the arm
failed the heart would still abide
in the old, beautiful strength and grace.
"And what did you seer" said, eagerly,
when friend went from our dale once
over into the Lake country, and on his
return told me he had been to Words
worth's home. 81 saw the grand old
man." he said, walking in his garden
with his wife Very old he was-nearly
blind, the people told me-but they
seemed like sweethearts, they were so ten
der and attentive" and Miss Martineau
tells the same story, with the additional
particulars of near neighbor-how she
would miss him and trot out to find him.
find him, perhaps, asleep in the sun, run
for his hat to shade his face, tend him and
watch him; and so it was that when he
died they dug his grave deep enough for
both, and when she died they were one
in the dust as they were one in heaven,
and had been on earth for over forty years.
The world came to him at last but the
wife at first "Worse and worse" JEFF
frey said in his review, when a new poem
came out Better and BETTER" said the
wife, sitting on the green bank. The
world might scott, the wife believed. She
was no Sarah to laugh at the angel of the
Lord. What wonder then that they were
sweethearts at three score and ten?
1t was so with the wife of Thomas Car
IL H. %1,x,h 1ao1 nf old
John Knox coursing through her heart
proud of his strength, tender of his weak
ness, never saying: "Thomas, pray do
write so that people can understand you"
His wild, weird words might puzzle her
brain, but they were the simplest Saxon
to her heart, and so when she died he had
craven on her tomb 'For forty years
she was the true and loving helpmate of
her husband, and by act and word un-
weariedly forwarded him as none else
could in all of worthy that he did or at
tempted" And this was what this man
said of his wife, and this wife of her hus-
band, when one was taken and the other
left, and their prayer had been fully an
swered in beautiful old age.
Now this is prayer we can all put up
to God on our wedding-day or, if we will,
on any day and every day after, and lind
the spirit of the answer in the spirit ofthe
cry. Is there danger that we shall make
it impossible for Heaven to hear US in
the tale of the years because we are
using them up as the prodigal used up his
fortune? We can guard against that. Is
there danger that while we may grow old
together in years there may be such q
growing difference of spirit and purpose
that at three score and ten we may merely
be two old people who have found each
other out but only to find it is all mis-
take? We can guard against that: For
where this safeguard to our inner life, and
for that matter our outer life also, is
needed, the answer to our prayer comes
in the true asking. No man and woman
ever cried out to God with their whole
heart fervently, "Mercifully ordain that
we may grow aged together who did not
find wellsprings. in their dryest desert,
CLEANS of sunshine stealing into their
darkest shadows, an arm of power for
their most appalling sleeps, and sunny
resting places all the way.