Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/158

is n't an Indian among you! Any respectable tomahawk would disown you."

I am beginning to understand that happiness in marriage is an art. I used to think it was a gift. In short, what I thought was a right proves to be a privilege.

. . . I hope I have not been exacting with Dana. He calls me so, when he is vexed about anything. I never was thought exacting in any other relation of life; but marriage makes a new being of a woman: a wife is as truly born into an unknown world as her child is. It seems to me that I have my own character to form, as completely as my daughter's. I, Marna Trent, slain on my wedding-day, am a transmigrated soul—the "twice-born," as the Buddhist calls it. I am in my second existence. . . . Will there be any others?

I found something in one of Max Müller's Oriental Bibles yesterday over in Father's library, when I went to sit with him and read to him, for Father is not quite well this fall, and it is touching to me to see how he clings to what he calls my "womanly tenderness." (He never said that I was exacting.) Here is what I read to Father:

Though I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by a strong wind, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy!