Anna Hale is not a person who can endure the roughs of life. She is a frail flower and would soon droop and die if exposed to storm and neglect. You have not in your previous marriage understood the wants of a woman. You have not appreciated her delicate organism. You failed, greatly failed, with your first wife. She possessed a powerful constitution which can scarcely be equaled for power of endurance, but she presumed too much. Your anxiety to acquire led you both to overtax yourselves and be swallowed up in the cares of this life, and to neglect present happiness and comfort, looking ahead to a time when you should have more of this world’s goods, and then you could afford to look after the comforts of life. (TSB 24.1) MC VC

You have made a sad mistake. The life of your wife was sacrificed. She might have lived. She ought to have lived. But you knew so little of woman’s organism that you failed to have care, and neglected the preparation you should have made for her comfort. To a very great degree you possess the temperament of your father. (TSB 24.2) MC VC

When you seek a wife, go not among the delicate and refined, where the intellectual predominates. Select you a wife among that class more in accordance with your organization. You cannot make a person of refined spiritual temperament happy.—Letter 21, 1868. (TSB 24.3) MC VC

Faithfulness in the Parental Home—It is by faithfulness to duty in the parental home that the young are to prepare themselves for homes of their own. Let them here practice self-denial and manifest kindness, courtesy, and Christian sympathy. Thus love will be kept warm in the heart, and he who goes out from such a household to stand at the head of a family of his own will know how to promote the happiness of her whom he has chosen as a companion for life. Marriage, instead of being the end of love, will be only its beginning.—Patriarchs and Prophets, 176. (TSB 24.4) MC VC