CHAPTER XXXVI.

FOUR-FEET-UPON-A-FENDER.

It is the sisterly heart rather than the author’s fancy that gives me as a companion in this, the last of these “Familiar Talks,” the typical American house-mother.

Whatever the alleged subject discussed in former chapters—­and each has borne more or less directly upon the leading theme, old yet never trite,—­THE SECRET OF A HAPPY HOME,—­I have had in heart and imagination this thin, nervous, intense creature whom I seat beside me.  Her own hands have made her neat; the same hands and far more care than ever goes to the care of herself make and keep her home neat and comfortable.

The dying Queen of England gasped that after her death there would be found stamped upon her heart the name of the Calais lost to her kingdom in her reign.  Our housewife carries her household forever bound upon her heart of hearts.  The word is the hall mark upon every endeavor and achievement.  It would be a poor recompense for a life of patient toil to convince her that she has wrought needlessly; that the same energy devoted to other objects would have made a nobler woman of her and the world better and happier.  Nor am I sure that in a majority of instances this would be true.  On the contrary, I hold religiously to the belief that God had wise reasons for setting each one of us in the socket in which she finds herself.  “Be more careful,” says an old writer, “to please Him perfectly than to serve Him much.”  If there are tasks which you, my sister, cannot demit without inconveniencing those whose welfare is your especial care, take this as a sure proof that the Father, in laying this work nearest to your hand—­and not to that of another—­has called you to it as distinctly as He called Paul to preach and Peter to glorify his Lord by the death he was to die.

In the talk we hold with our four feet upon the fender, the fire-glow making other light unnecessary, I do not propose to enter upon the favorite theme with some, of what you might have done had circumstances been propitious to the assumption of what are rated as more dignified duties.  We will take your life as it is, and see what the practice of the inward grace I shall designate can make of it.

You are inclined to be down-hearted upon anniversaries.  You need not tell me what I know so well of myself.  Another year has gone, another year has dawned, and you are in the same old rut of ordering and cooking meals and clearing up after they have been eaten, sweeping, dusting, making and mending clothes, washing, dressing and training children, and the thousand and one nameless tasks that fritter away strength, leaving nothing to show for the waste.

   “God help us on the common days,
   The level stretches white with dust!”

prays Margaret Sangster.  You would cry out in the pain of retrospection and anticipation, that all the days of the years of your life are common days—­“only that and nothing more.”