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-16-
The
Marriage Ring
MUTUAL SYMPATHY—Sickness may call for this, and females seem both formed and inclined by nature to yield it.
Oh woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made—
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
Unwilling, and, indeed, unable to subscribe to the former part of this description, I do most readily assent to the truth of the latter. If we could do without her, and be happy in health, what are we in sickness without her presence and her tender offices? Can we smooth, as a woman can, the pillow on which the sick man lays his head? No. We cannot administer the medicine or the food as she can. There is a softness in her touch, a lightness in her step, a skill in her arrangements, a sympathy looking down upon us from her beaming eye, which ours wants. Many a female, by her devoted and kind attentions in a season of sickness, has drawn back to herself that cold and alienated heart, which neither her charms could hold, nor her claims recover. I entreat you, therefore, married females, to put forth all your power to soothe and please in the season of your husband's sickness. Let him see you willing to make any sacrifices of pleasure, ease, or sleep, to minister to his comfort. Let there be a tenderness in your manner, a wakeful attention and sympathy in your look, a something that seems to say, your only comfort in his affliction is to employ yourselves in alleviating it. Hearken with patience and kindness to the tale of his lighter, and even his imaginary woes. A cold, heartless, awkward, unsympathizing woman is an exception from the general rule, and therefore the severer libel upon her sex.
Nor is this sympathy exclusively the duty of the wife; but belongs equally to the husband. He cannot, it is true, perform the same offices for her, which she can discharge for him; but much he can do, and all he can he should do. Her sicknesses are generally more numerous and heavy than his; she is likely, therefore, to make more frequent calls upon his tender interest and attention. Many of her ailments are the consequence of becoming his wife. She was, perhaps, in full vigor, till she became a mother, and from that time never had a moment's perfect ease or strength again. That event, which sent into his heart the joys of a parent, dismissed from her frame the comforts of health. And shall he look with discontent, and indifference, and insensibility, upon that delicate flower, which, before he transplanted it to his garden, glowed in beauty and in fragrance, to the admiration of every spectator? Shall he now cease to regard it with any pleasure, or sympathy, and seem as if he wished it gone, to make room for another, forgetting that it was he that sent the worm to the root, and caused its head to droop, and its colors to fade?
Husbands, I call upon you for all the skill and tenderness of love, on behalf of your wives, if they are weak and sickly. Watch by their couch, talk with them, pray with them, wake with them. In all their afflictions, be you afflicted. Never listen heedlessly to their complaints; and, oh, by all that is sacred in conjugal affection, I implore you never, by your cold neglect, or petulant expressions, or discontented look, to call up in their imaginations, unusually sensitive at such a season, the phantom of a fear, that the disease, which has destroyed their health, has done the same for your affection. Oh, spare their bosom the agonizing pangs of supposing, that they are living to be a burden to your disappointed heart.
The cruelty of that man wants a name, and I know of none sufficiently emphatic, who denies his sympathy to a suffering woman, whose only sin is a broken constitution, and whose calamity is the result of her marriage. Such a man does the work of a murderer, without his punishment, and, in some instances, without his reproach; but not always without his design or his remorse.
But sympathy should be exercised by man and wife, not only in reference to their sicknesses, but to all their afflictions, whether personal or relative; all their sorrows should be common. Like two strings in unison, the chord of grief should never be struck in the heart of one, without causing a corresponding vibration in the heart of the other; or, like the surface of the lake answering to the Heaven, it should be impossible for calmness and sunshine to be upon one, while the other is agitated and cloudy. Heart should answer to heart, and face to face.