This title best fits Victoria, the true queen of the world, but it fits
her best because she is the best type of a noble wife, the queen of her
husband's heart, and of a queen mother whose children rise up and call
her blessed.
"I noticed," said Franklin, "a mechanic, among a number of others, at
work on a house a little way from my office, who always appeared to be
in a merry humor; he had a kind word and smile for every one he met.
Let the day be ever so cold, gloomy, or sunless, a happy smile danced on
his cheerful countenance. Meeting him one morning, I asked him to tell
me the secret of his constant flow of spirits.
"'It is no secret, doctor,' he replied. 'I have one of the best of
wives; and, when I go to work, she always has a kind word of
encouragement for me; and, when I go home, she meets me with a smile and
a kiss; and then tea is sure to be ready, and she has done so many
little things through the day to please me that I cannot find it in my
heart to speak an unkind word to anybody.'"
Some of the happiest homes I have ever been in, ideal homes, where
intelligence, peace, and harmony dwell, have been homes of poor people.
No rich carpets covered the floors; there were no costly paintings on
the walls, no piano, no library, no works of art. But there were
contented minds, devoted and unselfish lives, each contributing as much
as possible to the happiness of all, and endeavoring to compensate by
intelligence and kindness for the poverty of their surroundings. "One
cheerful, bright, and contented spirit in a household will uplift the
tone of all the rest. The keynote of the home is in the hand of the
resolutely cheerful member of the family, and he or she will set the
pitch for the rest."
"Young men," it is said, "are apt to be overbearing, imperious, brusque
in their manner; they need that suavity of manner, and urbanity of
demeanor, gracefulness of expression and delicacy of manner, which can
only be gained by association with the female character, which possesses
the delicate instinct, ready judgment, acute perceptions, wonderful
intuition. The blending of the male and female characteristics produces
the grandest character in each."
The woman who has what Helen Hunt so aptly called "a genius for
affection,"--she, indeed, is queen of the home. "I have often had
occasion," said Washington Irving, "to remark the fortitude with which
woman sustains the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those
disasters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the
dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give
such intrepidity and elevation to their character that at times it
approaches sublimity."
If a wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so that it shall be the
cleanest, sweetest, cheerfulest place her husband can find refuge in,--a
retreat from the toils and troubles of the outer world,--then God help
the poor man, for he is virtually homeless. "Home-keeping hearts," said
Longfellow, "are happiest." What is a good wife, a good mother? Is she
not a gift out of heaven, sacred and delicate, with affections so great
that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their
bound; fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and
society and the world; of such value that no one can appreciate it,
unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or unless,
in some great crisis of life, when all else failed him, he had a wife to
reenforce him with a faith in God that nothing could disturb?
Nothing can be more delightful than an anecdote of Joseph H. Choate, of
New York, our Minister at the Court of St. James. Upon being asked, at a
dinner-party, who he would prefer to be if he could not be himself, he
hesitated a moment, apparently running over in his mind the great ones
on earth, when his eyes rested on Mrs. Choate at the other end of the
table, who was watching him with great interest in her face, and
suddenly replied, "If I could not be myself, I should like to be Mrs.
Choate's second husband."
"Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the
bones." It is the little disputes, little fault-findings, little
insinuations, little reflections, sharp criticisms, fretfulness and
impatience, little unkindnesses, slurs, little discourtesies, bad
temper, that create most of the discord and unhappiness in the family.
How much it would add to the glory of the homes of the world if that
might be said of every one which Rogers said of Lord Holland's sunshiny
face: "He always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden
good fortune has fallen"!
The value of pleasant words every day, as you go along, is well depicted
by Aunt Jerusha in what she said to our genial friend of "Zion's
Herald":--
"If folks could have their funerals when they are alive and well and
struggling along, what a help it would be"! she sighed, upon returning
from a funeral, wondering how poor Mrs. Brown would have felt if she
could have heard what the minister said. "Poor soul, she never dreamed
they set so much by her!
"Mis' Brown got discouraged. Ye see, Deacon Brown, he'd got a way of
blaming everything on to her. I don't suppose the deacon meant
it,--'twas just his way,--but it's awful wearing. When things wore out
or broke, he acted just as if Mis' Brown did it herself on purpose; and
they all caught it, like the measles or the whooping-cough.
"And the minister a-telling how the deacon brought his young wife here
when 't wa'n't nothing but a wilderness, and how patiently she bore
hardship, and what a good wife she'd been! Now the minister wouldn't
have known anything about that if the deacon hadn't told him. Dear!
Dear! If he'd only told Mis' Brown herself what he thought, I do believe
he might have saved the funeral.
"And when the minister said how the children would miss their mother,
seemed as though they couldn't stand it, poor things!
"Well, I guess it is true enough,--Mis' Brown was always doing for some
of them. When they was singing about sweet rest in heaven, I couldn't
help thinking that that was something Mis' Brown would have to get used
to, for she never had none of it here.
"She'd have been awful pleased with the flowers. They was pretty, and no
mistake. Ye see, the deacon wa'n't never willing for her to have a
flower-bed. He said 't was enough prettier sight to see good cabbages
a-growing; but Mis' Brown always kind of hankered after sweet-smelling
things, like roses and such.
"What did you say, Levi? 'Most time for supper? Well, land's sake, so it
is! I must have got to meditating. I've been a-thinking, Levi, you
needn't tell the minister anything about me. If the pancakes and pumpkin
pies are good, you just say so as we go along. It ain't best to keep
everything laid up for funerals."
_It is the grand secret of a happy home to express the affection you
really have._
"He is the happiest," it was said by Goethe, "be he king or peasant, who
finds peace in his home." There are indeed many serious, too
serious-minded fathers and mothers who do not wish to advertise their
children to all the neighbors as "the laughing family." If this be so,
yet, at the very least, these solemn parents may read the Bible. Where
it is said, "provoke not your children to wrath," it means literally,
"do not irritate your children;" "do not rub them up the wrong way."
Children ought never to get the impression that they live in a hopeless,
cheerless, cold world; but the household cheerfulness should transform
their lives like sunlight, making their hearts glad with little things,
rejoicing upon small occasion.
"How beautiful would our home-life be if every little child at the
bed-time hour could look into the faces of the older ones and say:
'We've had such sweet times to-day.'"
"To love, and to be loved," says Sydney Smith, "is the greatest
happiness of existence."