The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1880-10-14

riage altar. And while before it The
PAIR are joining hands in betrotlal
standing between them all unseen is
either the white winged angel oi
blessing or the horned and hoofed
and fired nostril of despair.
Again, count corrupt literature
as the foe of the m arriage relation
the slushy books and pamphlets
that tell how impossible men were
married to impossible women and
got into impossible difficulties with
impossible consequences. The
fact is that some of our young mar
ried people, through such literature,
get so filed with sentimental and
false ideas about this plain, serious
and old-fashioned institution of
marriage, that they are untitled for
the humble duties of every day
life. Better, when you go home to-
day. gathe- pH sH ',.,. fs--:: III, -, ..;,,
internal stuff and fling it into the
kitchen CRATE, otherwise it will cor
irupt you and your children after
you. Now want to make you en-
mics OF everything that antago-
nizes the marriage relation. The
most of you born of honorable pa
rentage, | want to swear you by the
cradle in which you were rocked
and the family altar at which in
childhood you knelt and the grave
of your Christian father and moth
er, If they have laid down beside
each other in the last sleep, to
SET YoUY FACES AGAINST
the influence which would bring
marriage into disrepute. Remem-
Der the best eulogy that you can
pass upon the institution is 10 make
your own home relations bright and
beautiful. Do not take offeDse too
easily from each other. Remember
that unkind words or unhappy
treatment is often not a matter of
the heart, but a matter of the
nerves. Husbands at the store and
wives with the household anXieties
have their equipoise unbalanced.
But few men and women of Ameri--
ca have anv nerve that iare worth
speaking of. These delicate tele-
graph wires of the body are dam
aged by the storms, and so let the
of temper run over them
irregularly. Know that these re
lations at the longest will be brief
Spare all the harsh words you can
and all severe retorts as far as pos
sible, for before long a hearse will
drive up to your door and from
your presence will be taken out the
best friend you have in all the
world, and the richest worldly boon
thai God has ia his omnipotence
and infinity capacity to bestow-
a good wife. When a child is ta-
ken, that desolates the home. But
a wife's departure desolates all the
house and all the earth. The silen-
ces are so appalling after her voice
is still, the vacancies so ghastly,
the gloom, as though the Md
night of fifty years hurtled. A
child wandering from room to
room with a hurt finger, crying for
mother, who will not come, and
waking in the night and crying for
a drink, saying, ''No, l want
mother to bring it," Reminiscent
ces rushing upon the soul like a
mountain torrent over which a
cloud has burst. Her jewels, her
books, her dresses, suggestive of
banquet or burial, put in the trunk,
the fall of whose lid with heavy
thud seems to say, 'Dead." The
morning dead and the night dead
and the air dead and the world
dead. 1 tell you, o man. in that
hour, if never before, you would
be willing to pay out in red coins
of blood every drop from your
heart to bring back all the hasty
and reckless words you have ever
uttered, and all the sights. But
you can not buy them back.
Words gone forth from your lips
fly not in circles, 50 as to come
back again, like doves to their cots,
but in a straight line, a million
miles a minute, across the eterni-
ties. Flattering epitaphology,
though Drydens composed it, and
polished Aberdeen granite though
Angeles chiseled it, could never
atone for unkindnesses to the
living.
1 have in my mind a couple uni
ted in holy marriage December 10,
1903. Their christian names were
old fashioned, like themselves
David the one, Catherine the other.
Legal contract, of course; but
most of all, the heart married
them. They lived TO celebrate
their crystal wedding, their silver
wedding, their golden wedding and
nine years beside. Over three chill
dren's graves they had wept, but
through all struggles Of life they
kept the Christian faith. They
lived for God, for each other, for
their children and for everybody
but themselves. Their hair whitened
and their steps grew shorter, and
their voices trembled in the church
psalm, though once they had led in
the village choir. The one leaned
heavily on the staff which i have in
my house, but heavier on the arm
of that God who had never failed
him. These two married ones
were well mated. What was the
joy of one was the JOY of the other;
what was the sorrow of one, the sor-
row of the other. At last they
parted Three years precedence
in departure did the Lord give her.
Though a deeply sympathetic man,
| never saw my father cry but once
and that was on the day OF moth