Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/378

 Let the wife only understand and have faith in her true position, that of woman "the helper," and she needs neither great gifts, nor an expansive mind, nor extraordinary beauty to be always charming to her husband, and, while she walks by his side, to

In being literally his "help-meet" she becomes the beautifier and healer of his life. If the parasitic vine about the oak-tree, to which she is so often compared, be truly her emblem, it is because she binds together the broken boughs, and drapes with verdurous loveliness the withered branches.