The Guthrie daily leader. [volume] (Guthrie, Okla.) 1893-1996, 1904-03-03
TRIBUTES TO WIVES
WORDS or TENDERNESS UTTERED
BY GREAT MEN.

The Homnge That Tom Hood paid 90
the Partaer OF His sorrows nnd
Joys-Jenn Paul Richter's Unstint-
ed Praise OF Caroline Mayer.
Few great men have paid more en-
thuslastic 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, chat I am more foolish than
rny boy lover, and | plead guilty, for
never was wooer so young Of heart
and so stepped In love as !. but it is
love sanctihed and strengthened by
long years of experience. May God
ever bless my darling, the sweetest,
most helpful. angel who ever stopped
to bless a manw Has there ever, we
wonder lived a wife to whom a more
delicate and beautiful tribute was paid
than those verses Of which the burden
is, Il love thee, love thee; It's all that
can sayY
~ want thee much" Nathaniel Haw-
thoime wrote to his wife many years
after bis long patience had won for
him the flower that was lent from
heaven TO show the possibilities of the
human SOUL "Ihou art the only per-
son in the world chat ever was neces-
sary to me, ana now ! am only myself
when thou art within my reach, Thou
art an unspeakahly beloved woman"
Sophia Hawthorne was little better
than chronic invalid, and it may be
that this physical weakness woke all
the deep chvalry and tenderness Of the
man. And he reaped a rich reward for
an almost unriyaled devotion in the
atmosphere of love aud happiness and
inspiration with which his delicate
wife always surrounded him.
The welded life Of Wordsworth with
his cousin, "the phantom of delight"
was 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 hcr "All that she has been to
me-" the poet once said in his latter
days "none but God and myself can
ever know and it w0uld be difficult
to find a more touching and beautiful
picture in the gallery of great mons
lives than that of Wordsworth aud his
wife. both bowed under the burden of
many years and almost blind, walking
hand I'm hand together in the garden,
with all the blissful absorption and
tender confidence of youthful lovers.
1t never needed "the welding touch
of great sorrow" to make the lives
of Archbishop TAFT and his devoted
wife "a perfect whole" Speaking of
her many years after she had been
taken from him, he said, "To part from
her, If only for a day. was a pain only
less intense than the pleasures with
which | returned to her. and when l
took her with me ii 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
thought for such IAN indulgence as
wooing and wedding" he declared hui
morously that when he was a little
less busy he would send home an ad-
yertisement for a wife preferably a
decent sort of widow" and yet so un-
consciously near was his fate that only
year later he was introducing his
bride, Mary Moffat. TO the home he had
built, largely with his own hands. at
Mabotsa. From that "supremely hap
by hour" 10 the day when, eighteen
/ years later, he received her 'last faint
whisperings" Of Shupanga, no man ever
had a more self sacrificing, brave, de-
voted wife than the missionary's
dau-.ter. In fact, they were more like
| two happy, light hearted childten 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 We're stripped OF
all their terrors
Jean Paul Richter confessed that he
never even suspected the potentiallties
OF human happiness until he met Caro-
line Mayer, that sweetest aud 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 godlike man that lives;
to be the wife Of such a man
is the greatest glory that can fall to a
| woman" while of his wife Richter
once wrote, Il thought when / married
her that ! had sounded the depths Of
human love but / have since realized
how unfathomable is the heart I'm
which noble woman has her shrine"