Every day becomes a yesterday. Our conduct at home should be such that the morrow will bring no regrets. Mrs. Sigourney thus describes the changes that must come over the brightest home:

It is sad enough when either a man or his wife learns first, when one or the other is taken away by death, that there has been a life-long want of considerate tenderness.

Supposing the late Thomas Carlyle had been a little more attentive to his brilliant and devoted wife during their long and lonely life in the plain home in Cheyne Row, in Chelsea, London, such words as these, which escaped her in a letter to a friend, could never have been said: "Those little attentions which we women attach so much importance to he was never in the habit of rendering to any one; his upbringing, and the severe turn of mind he has from nature, had alike indisposed him toward them."

But the grim old man saw his mistake at last. It was all too late, however. It was only after all her sacrifices had been made, and he had written his many works, and she lay in her grave, that he awoke to a knowledge of his long neglect. Mr. Froude says that Carlyle often said, when there was no more opportunity for a kind word to reach his wife: "O if I could but see her for five minutes, to assure her that I really cared for her throughout all that; but she never knew it, she never knew it." It is no wonder that Mr. Froude was compelled to write of Carlyle these sad words: "For many years after she had left him, when he passed the spot where she was last seen alive he would bare his gray head in the wind and rain, his features wrung with unavailing sorrow."

We are prone to take too many things for granted. You should not assume that your thoughtless word, or harsh manner, or forgetfulness of little and delicate attentions will have no effect, and will be duly passed by as unmeaning. No such thing! Every word or look which is incompatible with genuine love and respect weighs like a millstone. Gentle attentions will be remembered, not only through the day, but through all the days. Recently, while on a visit in Irvington-on-the-Hudson, the widow of a celebrated publisher led me to the portrait of her lamented husband, and stood in admiration before the magnificent painting. She then said to me: "I esteem it the greatest honor that could be conferred upon me to have been the wife of such a man." Could there be a grander tribute to an attentive and devoted husband?

In that exquisite work, Memorials of a Quiet Life, Mrs. Hare pays this beautiful tribute to her husband: "I never saw any body so easy to live with, by whom the daily petty things of life were passed over so lightly; and then there is a charm in the refinement of feeling which is not to be told in its influence upon trifles." Mrs. Stowe, in describing the good qualities of the Duchess of Sutherland in her own home in Scotland, says that she excelled in considerateness. Paul's advice is as beautiful as it is true, and suits young married people perfectly. In the Revised Version it reads thus: "In lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself; not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others." Another piece of Pauline advice is of equally useful quality: "Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another."

Happy are they whom death has not yet divided, and to whom it is still granted to say such words and do such kindly acts as will prove delightful memories when the Happy To-Days become only Yesterdays in the Home.

Transcriber's Note:
The second signature on the "Witnesses" page does not reproduce in the scan shown.