Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1902-05-01

bate woman to millionaire or MARQUIS and-
that IN many cases makes life an unhappi-
ness. How can any human being, who
knows neither of the two parties as God
knows them, and who is ignorant of the
future, give such directions as YOU re-.
quire at such a crisis?
Take the advice of the earthly match
| maker instead of the divine guidance. and
you may some day be led to use the words
of Solomon, whose experience in home life
was as melancholy as it was multitudinous.
One day his palace, with its great wide
rooms and great wide doors and great
wide hall, was too small for him and the
loud tongue of woman belaboring him
about some. Of his neglects, and he re-
treated to the housetop to get relief from.
the fungal bombardment And while there
ne saw poor man on one corner of the
roof with a mattress for his only furni-
ture, and the open sky his only covering.
And Solomon envies him and cries out:
1t IS better to dwell in the corner of the
housetop than with a Drawing woman in.
a wide house, And one day during the
rainy season the water leaked through
the roof of the palace and began to drop
in a pail or pan set there to catch it. And
at one side of him all day long the water
went drop! drop! drop while on the
other side female companion quarreling
about this, and quarreling about that; the
| acrimonious and petulant words falling on
his ear in ceaseless peiting-1 ~! drop!
drop! and he seized his pen an> wrote:
| "A continual dropping in very rainy
day and a contentious woman are alike"
II Solomon had been as prayerful at the
beginning Of his life as he was at his
close, how much domestic infelicity he
would have avoided?
But prayer about this will amount to
nothing unless you pray soon enough.
Wait until you are fascinated and the
equilibrium of your soul is disturbed by a
~ md
you will answer your own prayers, and
you will mistake your own infatuation for
the voice of God.
If you have this prayerful spirit you will
surely avoid all female scoffers at the
Christian religion; and there are quite
must be told that, though the only in
f1uence that keeps woman from being
estimated and treated as a slave-aye, as,
a brute and beast of BURDENS Christi
| anlty, since where it is not dominant she
is SO treated: yet there are women who
will so far forget themselves and forget
their God that they will go and hear lee
turers malign Christianity and scotf at the
most sacred things of the soul. A good
woman, over-persuaded by her husband,
may go once to hear such a TRADE against
the Christian religion, not fully knowing
what she is going to hear; but she Will
| not go twice.
A woman, not Christian, but a re-
specter of religion, said to me: II was
persuaded by my husband to go and hear
| an infidel lecture once, but going home
[ said to him: my dear husband, 1
should result in our enforcement forever ~
And the woman was right. Ii after alis
| that Christ and Christianity have done
for a woman, she can so again and again
| to hear such assaults, she is an awful crea-
ture, and you had better not come near
washed, and for three weeks to be soaked
| in carbolic acid, and for a whole year
| fumigated, before she is fit for decent
society. While it is not demanded that a.
woman be a Christian before marriage, ,,
| she must have regard for the Christian re-
igion or, she is a bad woman and un
worthy of being your companion in life
charged with such stupendous solemnity,
and vicisstudes. >
| What you want o mani in a wife. is.
| not a butterfly of the sunshine, not a.
giggling nonentity, not painted doll,
not gossiping gadabout, not mixture Of
artlficialities which leave you in doubt as
to where the humbug ends and the woman
begins, but an earnest soul, one that can
not only laugh when you laugh, but weep
when you weep. There will be wide, deep
graves in your path of life, and you viii
both want steadying when you come to
the verge Of them,. tell you. When your
talk of treasures in heaven, and not charge.
upon you with bitter, II told you so''
Don't make the mistake that the man
of the text made in letting his eye settle
the question in which coolest Judgment.
directed by divine wisdom are all-im-
portant. He who has no reason for his
wifely choice except a pretty face is like
a man who should buy farm because CT
the dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty
is talent, and when God gives it He in
tends it as benediction upon a woman's
face. When the good Princess of Vale,
mer, and [ saw her radiant face, could
understand what they told me the day
before, that, when at the great military
hospital where are now the wounded and
the sick from the Egyptian and other
wars, the Princess passed through, all the
who could be reused neither by doctor nor
nurse from their stupor, would get up on
their elbows to look at her, and wan and
wasted lips prayed an audible prayer:
God bless the Princess of Wales. Doesn't
she look beautifully"
and says: "Well, we'll, you are the great
est woman I ever saw. l thought you
would faint dead away when 1 told you.''
And as he looks at her all the glories of
physiognomy in the Court of Louis XIV,
on the modern fashion plates, are tame as
of that woman's face. Joan of Arc, Mary
Antoinette, and La Belle Hamilton, the
enchantment of the Court of Charles II,
are nowhere
There is another time when the plainest
wife is queen of beauty to her husband.
She has done the work of life. She has
reared her children for God and heaven,
and though some of them may be little
wild they will yet come back, for God has
promised. She is dying, and her husband
stands by. They think over all the years
Of their .colnpanionship, the weddings and
the bulials, the ups and the down, the
successes and the failures. They talk
over the goodness of God and His faith
fulness to children's children. She has no
fear about going. The Lord has sustained
her so many years she would not dare to
distrust Him now. The lips of both of
them tremble as they say good-by and en-
courage each other about an early meeting
in better world. The breath is feebfer
and feebler, and stops. Are you sure of it?
Just hold that mirror at the mouth, and
see if there is any vapor gathering on the
surface. Gone! As one of the neghbors