A Genuine love Story.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 89, 14 February 1885, Page 5

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, vivacity, and rich attire; and when during the ovening her husband drew her aside and whispered to her that she was the most beautiful women in all the company, and that his heart was bursting" with pride and love for her, she thought herself the happiest woman in the world. Ten years later the samo husband and his wife were guosts at the same house, where was gathered a similar gay company. The wife of 10 years woro the same dress she had worn on the previous occasion : of course, it had been made ovor, and was old-fashioned and almost shabby. Toil and care and motherhood and pinched circumstances had taken the roses out of her cheeks, and the lithe spirit out of her form. Sho sat apart from the crowd, looking caroworn and preoccupied. Her small hands, roughened with coarse toil, were ungloved, for the minister's salary was painfullly small. A little apart, the ten years husband j stood and looked at his wife, and as ho observed her faded dress and weary attitude, a great senso of all her patient, loving faithfulness came over his heart. Looking up she caught his oarnest gaze and noticed that his eyes wfere filled with tears. She rose and went to him, her questioning eyes mutely asking an explanation of his emotion ; and when he tenderly took her hand and placing it on his arm, led her away from tho crowd and told her how he had been thinking of her as she looked ten yeaia before when sho 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 sacrifices and patient toil for him and thoir childron, a great wave of happine&s filled her heart, a light eliono in her face that gavo it moro than its youthful beauty, and in all this company thero was not so happy a couple as this husband and wife, their hearts and faces aglow from the flaming up of a pure sentiment that transfigured and ennobled and glorified all the toils and privations they had endured.