d
without daily proof between lovers; cry down latent caloric in the
market; insist that the mere fact of being a wife is not enough,--that
the words spoken once, years ago, are not enough,--that love needs new
leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-trees, and new branches
to grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the root to cover the
ground.

"Oh, but I have heard that here is no surer way to lose love than to be
exacting, and that it never comes for a woman's reproaches."

"All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of
unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper,--you could not use any of
these forces, if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of
the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred,--that
of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt.
Thoughtless, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sacrifice, such as
many women long to bestow on husband and children, soil and lower the
very objects of their love. _You_ may grow saintly by self-sacrifice;
but do your husband and children grow saintly by accepting it without
return? I have seen a verse which says,--

'They who kneel at woman's shrine
Breathe on it as they bow.'

Is not this true of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we _let_
our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance,
we are no true lover, no true friend. Any good man soon learns to
discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman's love to
his soul, her concern for his honor, her anxiety for his moral
development, and the pettish cry which comes from her own personal
wants. It will be your own fault, if, for lack of anything you can do,
your husband relapses into these cold, undemonstrative habits which have
robbed his life of so much beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren ways
of living are as unchristian as they are disagreeable; and you, as a
good Christian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's banner, must
make headway against this sort of family Antichrist, though it comes
with a show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. Remember, dear,
that the Master's family had its outward tokens of love as well as its
inward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom; and the traitor could not
have had a sign for his treachery, had there not been a daily kiss at
meeting and parting with His children."

"I am glad you have said all this," said Emily, "because now