The wife's part

Many's the time I've expended frank worry over the fact that I seem to have absolutely nothing to offer my earthly lord. Complicating this situation is the fact that he does everything, everything for me, and with a smile on his face. So this bit of old-timey Presbyterian wisdom from Home-Making by JR Miller caught my attention:

The true wife clings and leans, but she also helps and inspires. Her husband feels the mighty inspiration of her love in all his life. Toil is easier, burdens are lighter, and battles are less fierce, because of the face that waits in the quiet of the home, because of the heart that beats in loving sympathy whatever the experience, because of the voice that speaks its words of cheer and encouragement when the day’s work is done. No wife knows how much she can do to make her husband honored among men, and his life a power and success, by her loyal faithfulness, by the active inspiration of her own sweet life. Here are the true words from another pen:

“The woodman’s axe swings lighter, the heavy blows on the anvil have more music than fatigue in them, the farmer whistles cheerfully over his plough, the mechanic’s severest toil is lightened by a sweet refrain, when he knows that his fair young bride is in sympathy with him, and while watching his return is providing daintily for his pleasure and comfort, eager to give him loving welcome. To the artist at his easel come fairer visions to be transformed to the canvas because of the dear one presiding over his house. The author in his study finds the dullest subjects clothed in freshness and vigor because of the gentle critic to whom he can go for aid and encouragement. The lawyer prepares his case with better balanced energy, thinks more clearly, pleads his cause with more effective eloquence, inspired by the cheering words uttered as he goes to his labors by the young wife whose thoughts he is assured will follow his work with her judicious, tranquillizing sympathy. The physician in his daily rounds among the sick and suffering knows there is one, now all his own, praying for his success, and this knowledge so fills his being that his very presence by the sick bed has healing in it. The young pastor in his efforts to minister to the spiritual wants of his flock will speak peace to the troubled souls committed to his trust with far more zeal and tenderness for the love that will smile on him when he returns home.”

Is it true? I hope so. And I hope I will do a better job of it today and tomorrow and as long as we both shall live.