| Home Making |
Chapter 1 |
Page 11 |
Another rule for wedded life is to watch against every small beginning of misunderstanding or alienation. In the wreck of many a home there lingers still the memory of months or years of very tender wedded life. The fatal estrangement that rent the home asunder and made scandal for the world began in a little difference which a wise, patient word might have composed. But the word was not spoken – an unwise, impatient word was spoken instead – and the trivial breach remained unclose, and grew wider till two hearts that had been knit together as one were torn forever apart. Rarely are estrangements the work of one day, or caused by one offence; they are growths.
“It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And, ever widening, slowly silence all–
The little rift within the lover’s lute:
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That, rotting inward, slowly moulders all.”
Page 11