Comrades of Life's Journey

Margaret Elizabeth Munson Sangster ~ 1897
Submitted by: Mrs. Deborah Phelps

A beautiful woman, with a crown of red gold hair and lustrous eyes, a woman of wonderful charm of manner and grace of movement, she seemed the ideal wife of a pastor, the very woman to enlist the sympathies and win the admiration of a congregation.

"My wife is a very great help to me," said the young minister, proudly. "She is my best critic, my other self, and she supplements everything I do. She is always beloved wherever we go."

"I try to be my husband's comrade," said the dear little woman, modestly, and instantly into the mind of one listener flashed the thought: "Yes, of course you do! And isn't that just what every wife, every husband should be, each to other a comrade? Partners in busines, fellow travelers on a long journey, disciples of one Master, why not also everywhere and in all circumstances comrades?"

Comradeship implies a certain congeniality of tastes and an appreciation of the difficulties and hardships common to the road and to those who travel it. These are not invariably equally felt by both in the married state or equally divided between them, for in the most perfect union there are differences of temperament which may make what is to one a mere pin prick, to the other a dagger thrust. Comradeship forbids distrust and petty jealousies. There cannot be harmony where vanity or ambition or lack of confidence introduces

The little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute.

The wife who is her husband's comrade in the highest sense will, for his sake, endeavor to keep abreast with him in study and in contact with the world. She will not--and this is more important than some dream--she will not suffer her motherly love for her children to interpose a distance between herself and their father. A mother's absorbing devotion to her babies has been known to keep her so occupied and to so engage all her thoughts that the babies' father has felt solitary and has drifted away from the anchorage of home.

Not only when the heat of summer forces the wife to take her brood from the heated town to the sea or the hills is the business man left alone in a silent house, but many a husband sees little of his wife, can seldom have her companionship to go about with him, because her maternal ideal is higher than her conjugal standard. Keep the balance even. A s I heard a husband say one evening: "Helen and I are trying to live as if we were one soul. Our children have never heard us differ. If we disagree about their management it is never in their presence. They belong to us both and we to them and to each other."

Here was the true comrade spirit. And the husband, bringing home day by day the fresh, breezy atmosphere of the outdoor world, to what end did he woo and win his wife if not to make her blessed among women to the very end? He should not seek other comradeship than hers and it is his part never to leave her out of any plan of work or pleasure. Hand in hand to the better land the true comrades go, growing like one another even in feature and expression as the years impress upon them their molding touches.

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