in memory's glass as we write, sits one of a most fair and beautiful
countenance, but over which hang dark clouds of care, and from the eyes
drop slowly bitter tears. She is what all around her would call a happy
wife and mother. Fortune smiles upon her, and the blessing of God abides
by the hearth-stone. Her husband is a professing Christian, as is also
his yet youthful-looking mother and the wife herself. Beautiful children
gambol around her, and look wonderingly in her face as they see those
tears. What is the secret of her unhappiness? She deems hers a very hard
lot, and yet if we rightly judge, could her sorrow be resolved to its
elements, it would be found that the turmoil of her spirit is occasioned
solely by the fact that she finds it hard to maintain her fancied
rights, her desired superiority over her husband and servants, because
of the presence of her calm, firm, dignified mother-in-law, whose very
lips seem chiseled to indicate that they speak only to be obeyed. What
would be the result if the tender, considerate love of Naomi and the
yielding spirit of Ruth were introduced to the bosom of each?

We cannot leave this record of Holy Writ without commenting also on the
remarkable state of society which existed in Bethlehem in those far
distant days. When Naomi returned after an absence of ten years--an
absence which to many might have seemed very culpable--with what
enthusiastic greetings was she received. "The whole city was moved." It
made no difference that she "went out full but had returned empty;" nor
did they stop to consider that "the Lord had testified against her." The
truest sympathy was manifested for her and for the stranger who had
loved her and clung to her. In her sorrow they clustered around to
comfort her, and when the bright reverse gave her again an honored name
and "a restorer of her life" in her young grandson, they were eager to
testify their joy. The apostolic injunction, "Rejoice with them that do
rejoice, and weep with them that weep," seems to have been strictly