Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1884 — A Genuine Love Story [ARTICLE]

A Genuine Love Story

. A young clergyman and his bride were invited guests at a large party given by a wealthy parishioner. In all the freshness and elegance of her bridal wardrobe the young wife shone among the throng, distinguished by her comeliness and vivac.ty and rich attire; and when during tlie evening her young husband drew her aside and whispered to her that she was the most beautiful woman in all the company, and that his heart was bursting with pride and love for her, she thought herself the happiest wife in the world. Ten years later the same husband and wife were guests at the same house, where was gathered a similar gay company. The wife of ten years ago wore •the same dress she had worn on the previous occasion, and of course it had been altered and made over, and was old fashioned and almost shabby. Toil and care and motherhood and pinched circumstances had taken the rosea out of the cheeks and the lithe spring out of her form. She sat apart from the crowd, careworn and preoccupied. Her small hands, roughened with coarse toil, were ungloved, for the minister’s salary was painfully small. A little apart the ten-years’ husband stood and looked at his wife, and, as he observed her faded dress and weary attitude, a great sense of all her patient, loving faithfulness came over his heart. Looking up, she caught his earnest gaze, and noticed that his eyes were filled with tears. She rose and went to him, her questioning eyes mutely asking for an explanation of his emotion; and when he tenderly took her hand and, placing it on his arm, led her away from the crowd and told her how he had been thinking of her as she looked ten years before when she was a bride, and how much more precious she was to him now, and how much more beautiful, for all her shabby dress and roughened hands, and how he appreciated all her sacrifice and patient toil for him and their children, a great wave’of happiness filled her heart, a light shone ■in her face that gave it morn than its youthful beauty, and in all the company there was not so happy a couple as this husband and wife, their hearts and faces aglow from the flaming up of pure sentiment that transfigured and ennobled and glorified all the toils and privation they had endured.— Anon. --