her opinion was always weighed by him carefully, and often deferred to.  A mutual confidence and a mutual dependence upon each other gradually took the place of early reserves, and now they sweetly draw together—­now they smoothly glide along the stream of life blessed indeed in all their marriage relations.  Who will say that Laura did not act a wise part?  Who will say that in sacrificing pride and self-will, she did not gain beyond all calculation?  No one, surely.  She is not her husband’s slave, but his companion and equal.  She has helped to reform and remodel his character, and make him less arbitrary, less self-willed, less disposed to be tyrannical.  In her mild forbearance, he has seen a beauty more attractive far than lip or cheek, or beaming eye.

Instead of looking upon his wife as below him, Henry Armour feels that she is his superior, and as such he tenderly regards and lovingly cherishes her.  He never thinks of obedience from her, but rather studies to conform himself to her most lightly-spoken wish.  To be thus united, what wife will not for a time sacrifice her feelings when her young self-willed husband so far forgets himself as to become exacting!  The temporary loss will turn out in the future to be a great gain.

A MOTHER’S INFLUENCE.

“THERE come the children from school,” said Aunt Mary, looking from the window.  “Just see that Clarence! he’ll have Henry in the gutter.  I never saw just such another boy; why can’t he come quietly along like other children?  There! now he must stop to throw stones at the pigs.  That boy’ll give you the heart-ache yet, Anna.”

Mrs. Hartley made no reply, but laid aside her work quietly and left the room to see that their dinner was ready.  In a few minutes the street-door was thrown open, and the children came bounding in full of life, and noisy as they could be.

“Where is your coat, Clarence?” she asked, in a pleasant tone, looking her oldest boy in the face.

“Oh, I forgot!” he replied, cheerfully; and turning quickly, he ran down stairs, and lifting his coat from where, in his thoughtlessness, he had thrown it upon the floor, hung it up in its proper place, and then sprang up the stairs.

“Isn’t dinner ready yet?” he said, with fretful impatience, his whole manner changing suddenly.  “I’m hungry.”

“It will be ready in a few minutes, Clarence.”

“I want it now.  I’m hungry.”

“Did you ever hear of the man,” said Mrs. Hartley, in a voice that showed no disturbance of mind, “who wanted the sun to rise an hour before its time?”

“No, mother.  Tell me about it, won’t you?”

All impatience had vanished from the boy’s face.

“There was a man who had to go upon a journey; the stage-coach was to call for him at sun-rise.  More than an hour before it was time for the sun to be up, the man was all ready to go, and for the whole of that hour he walked the floor impatiently, grumbling at the sun because he did not rise.  ‘I’m all ready, and I want to be going,’ he said.  ‘It’s time the sun was up, long ago.’  Don’t you think he was a very foolish man?”