Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-09-18
has been or ever will be is good char

acter.
Ask this counsel of father and moth
er in this most important step of your
life. They are good advisers. They
are the best friends you ever had.
They made more sacrifices for you
than any one else ever did, and they
will do more today for your happi-
ness than any other people. Ask them.
and, above all, ask God. I used to
smile at John Brown of Haddington
because, when he was about to offer
his hand and heart in marriage to one
who became his lifelong companion,
he opened the conversation by saying,
'Let us pray" But I have seen so
many shipwrecks on the sea of mat
rimony 1 have made up my mind that
John Brown of Haddington was right.
A union formed in prayer will be
happy union, though sickness pale the
cheek and poverty empty the bread
tray and death open the small graves
and all the path Of life be strewn with
thOrns, from the marriage altar, with
its wedding march and orange bios
SONS, clear on down to the last fare
well at that gate where Isaac and Re-
becca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam and
Eve, parted. And let me say to you
who are in this relation, If you make
one man or woman happy you have not
lived in vain. Christ says that what
he is to the church you ought to be to
each other, and if sometimes, through
difference Of opinion or difference of
disposition, you make up your mind
that your marriage was a mistake pa
that there is a glory in the patient en-
durance of a sad yoke. Life at the
longest is short, and for those who
have been badly mated in this world
death will give quick and final bill of
enforcement written in letters of green
grass on quiet graves. And perhaps,
my brother, my sister, perhaps you
may appreciate each other better in
heaven than you have appreciated each
other on earth.
Divine Institution.
In the Farm Ballads our Ameri-
can poet puts into the lips of a re-
pentant husband, after life of mar
ried perturbation, these suggestive
words:
And when she dies I wish that she would be laid
by me,
And, lying together in silence. perhaps will
agree,
And if ever we meet in heaven would not think
it queer
II we love each other better because quarreled
here.
And let me say to those of you who
are in happy married union, avoid first
Quarrels; have no unexplained CORE
spondence with former admirers; cul-
ttvate no suspicious; in a moment Of
bad temper do not rush out and tell
the neighbors; do not let any Of those
gadaboutS Of society unload in your
house their baggage of CAB and little
tattle; do not make it an invariable
rule to stand on your rights; learn how
to apologize; do not be so proud or so
stubborn or so devilish that you will
not make up. Remember that the
worst domestic misfortunes and most
divorce cases started from
little infelicites. The whole piled up
train of ten rail cars telescoped and
smashed at the foot of an embank-
ment 100 feet down came to that ca
tastrOphe by getting two or three inch
es off the track. Some of the greatest
domestic misfortunes and the widest
divorce cases have started
from little misunderstanding that
were allowed to go on and go on until
home and responsibility and religion
and immortal soul went down in the
crash.
Fellow citizens as we'll as fellow
Christians, let us have a divine rage
against anything that wars on the mar
riage state. Blessed institution! In
stead of two arms to fight the battle
Of life, four; instead of two eyes to
scrutinize the path Of life, four; in
stead of two shoulders to lift the bur-
den of life, four; twice the energy,
twice the courage, twice the holy am
ly success, twice the prospects Of |
heaven. Into that matrimonial bower
God fetcheS two souls. Outside the |
bower, room for all contentious, and |
all chickering's, and all controversies, |
but inside that bower there is room for |
only one guest-the angel Of love. Let |
that angel stand at the floral doorway |
Of this Edenic bower with drawn |
sword to heW down the worst foe of !
that bower-easy divorce. And for ev-
cry paradise lost may there be para
disc regained. And after we quit our
home here may we have a brighter
home in heaven, at the windows Of |
which, this moment, are familiar faces |
for our arrival and wonder
ing why so long we tarry.