She married a young lawyer, without
property, but with good and increasing practice. She meant to be a
good wife, but she did not know how. Her wastefulness involved him in
debt. He did not reproach, though he tried to convince and instruct
her. She loved him; and weeping replied, 'I try to do the best I can;
but when I lived at home, mother always took care of everything.'
Finally, poverty came upon him 'like an armed man;' and he went into
a remote town in the Western States to teach a school. His wife folded
her hands, and cried; while he, weary and discouraged, actually came
home from school to cook his own supper. At last, his patience, and
her real love for him, impelled her to exertion. She promised to
learn to be useful, if he would teach her. And she did learn! And the
change in her habits gradually wrought such a change in her husband's
fortune, that she might bring her daughters up in idleness, had not
experience taught her that economy, like grammar, is a very hard and
tiresome study, after we are twenty years old.
Perhaps some will think the evils of which I have been speaking are
confined principally to the rich; but I am convinced they extend to
all classes of people.
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