Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1904-02-24
TRIBUTES TO WIVES
WORDS OF TENDERNESS UTTERED
BY GREAT MEN.


Joys-Jean Paul Richter's Unstint-
ed Praise of Caroline Mayer.
Few great men have paid more en-
thusiastic tributes to their wives than
Tom Hood. and probably few wives
have better deserved such homage, says
the Chicago Chronicle. you will
think" he wrote to her in one Of his
letters, that 1 am more foolish than
any boy lover. and I plead guilty, for
never was a wooer so young of heart
and so stepped in love as 1, but it is
love sanctifed and strengthened by
long years of experience. May God
ever bless my darling, the sweetest,
most helpful, angel who ever stopped
to bless a man. Has there ever, we
wonder, lived a wife 10 whom a more
delicate and beautiful tribute was paid
than those verses of which the burden
Is, II love thee, love thee; It's all that
! can say"
II want thee much" Nathaniel Haw-
thorne wrote to his wife many years
after his long patience had won for
him the flower that was lent from
heaven to show the possibilities of the
human soul" Thou art the only per-
son in the world that ever was neces-
sary to me, and now l am only myself
when thou art within my reach. Thou
art an unspeakably beloved woman"
Sophia Hawthorne was little better
than a chronic invalid, and it may be
that this physical weakness woke all
the deep chivalry and tenderness Of the
~ h. rich r6 for
an almost unrivaled devotion in the
atmosphere of love and happiness and
inspiration" with which his delicate
wife always surrounded him.
The welded life of Wordsworth with
his cousin, 1.-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 "a center of sweetness to all
around her. ''All that she has been to
me-" the poet once said in his latter
days, "none but God and myself can
ever know" and il would be difficult
TO find n more touching and beautiful
picture in the gallery of great mems
lives than that of Wordsworth and his
wife both bowed under the burden of
many years and almost blind, walking
hand In hand together in the garden,
with all the bIissful absorption and
tender confidence of youthful lovers.
1t never needed 1.-The welding touch
of a great sorrow. to make the lives
of Archbishop TAFT and his devoted
wife IA perfect whole" Speaking of
her many years after she had been
taken from him. he said, To part from
her, If only for day. was a pain only
less intense than the pleasures with
which l returned to her. and when
took her with me it was one of the
purest joys given to man to watch
the meeting between her and our chill
dren."
When David Livingstone had passed
his thirtieth birthday, with barely a
thought for such IAN indulgence as
wooing and wedding" he declared hu-
morously that when he was a little
less busy he would send home an adj
vertisement for a wife, preferably 4
decent sort of widow" and yet SO I'M
consciously near was his fate that only
year later he was introducing his
AOudls " hC Aah
built, largely with his own hands, at
Mabotsa. From that ''supremely hap
py hour to the day when, eighteen
years later, he received her last faint
whisperings' at Shupanga, no man ever
had a more self sacrificing, brave, de-
voted wife than the missionary s
daughter. In fact, they were more like
two happy, light hearted children than
sedate married folk, and under the
magic of their merriment the hard
ships and dangers of life in the heart
of the dark continent were stripped of
| all their terrors.
Jean Paul Richter confessed that he
never even suspected the potentialities
of human happiness until he met Caro-
| line Mayer. that sweetest and most
gifted of women" when he was fast
approaching his fortieth year, and that
he had no monopoly of the resultant
happiness is proved by his wife's dec
| laration that Richter is the purest, the
! holiest. the most godlilSe man that lives
TO be the wife OF such man
is the greatest glory that can fall to a
woman" while OF his wife Richter
/ once wrote. Il thought when l married
! her that l had sounded the depths OF
human love. but l have since realized
| how unfathomable is the heart in
which noble woman has her shrine"