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 and when too, in case of a wife dying, her sister would remain in charge of his family, or would remove to the bereaved home, to live with the widower and take care of his children as a thing of course, without a whisper of slander, or any occasion for it; when the children, too, knowing that their aunt could never be in any nearer relation to them, loved and reverenced her, and confided in her, and yielded readily a most wholesome influence to her.

"But since such increased nearness of connexion has been deemed not improper and even desirable, there has grown up in families a perceptible and painful constraint, the children learning to look with apprehension on their mother's sisters, and the wives becoming jealous of their influence with their husbands, while familiarities which formerly were thought to be and really were innocent, have come to possess a consciousness of evil tendency which itself is of the nature of sin.

"I know of a wife whose health was gradually declining, a woman of the world, with a husband as worldly as herself, and in their house was a young and attractive sister of hers, between whom and her husband there had grown up gradually a degree of affectionate intercourse which in the days of the wife's health had been thought only natural. But as her end drew near it became on his part more pointed, and drew to it her attention so agonizingly, that it became the one engrossing feeling of her soul for the few last weeks of her life, exciting in her an undisguised dread of what she foresaw would, as it did take place, and so absorbed her as to shut out all thought of religion and make her miserable to her very death.

"In another instance I knew of an excellent sister-in-law who had been living with and watching over her sister's children until the death of their mother, but who on that