Neither your parents, teachers, or husband have trained you for the place you fill, nor furnished you with the knowledge or assistance needed to enable you to meet all the complicated and untried duties of your lot. A young woman who has never had the care of a child, never done house-work, never learned the numberless processes that are indispensable to keep domestic affairs in regular order, never done any thing but attend to books, drawing, and music at school, and visiting and company after she left school—such an one is as unprepared to take charge of a nursery, kitchen, and family establishment, as she is to take charge of a man-of-war. And the chief blame rests with those who placed her so unprepared in such trying circumstances. Therefore, you have a right to feel that a large part of these evils are more your misfortune than your fault, and that they entitle you to sympathy rather than blame.
The next word of comfort is, the assurance that you can do every one of your duties, and do them well, and the following is the method by which you can do it. In the first place, make up your mind that it never is your duty to do any thing more than you can, or in any better manner than the best you can. And whenever you have done the best you can, you have done well; and it is all that man should require, and certainly all that your heavenly Father does require.
The next thing is, for you to make out an inventory of all the things that need to be done in your whole establishment. Then calculate what things you find you can not do, and strike them off the list, as what are not among your duties. Of those that remain, select a certain number that you think you can do exactly as they need to be done, and among these be sure that you put the making of good bread. This every housekeeper can do, if she will only determine to do it.
Make a selection of certain things that you will persevere in having done as well as they can be done, and let these be only so many as you feel sure you can succeed in attempting. Then make up your mind that all the rest must go along as they do, until you get more time, strength, and experience, to increase the list of things that you determine shall always be well done.
By this course you will have the comfort of feeling that in some respects you are as good a housekeeper as you can be, while there will be a cheering progress in gaining on all that portion of your affairs that are left at loose ends. You will be able to measure a gradual advance, and be encouraged by success. Many housekeepers fail entirely by expecting to do every thing well at first, when neither their knowledge or strength is adequate, and so they fail everywhere, and finally give up in despair.
Are you not only a housekeeper, but a mother? Oh, sacred and beautiful name! how many cares and responsibilities are associated with it! And how many elevating and sublime anticipations and hopes are given to inspire and to cheer! You are training young minds whose plastic texture will receive and retain every impression you make; who will imitate your feelings, tastes, habits, and opinions; and who will transmit what they receive from you to their children, to pass again to the next generation, and then to the next, until a whole nation may possibly receive its character and destiny from your hands! No imperial queen ever stood in a more sublime and responsible position than you now occupy in the eye of Him who reads the end from the beginning, and who is appointing all the trials and discipline of your lot, not for purposes which are visible to your limited ken, but in view of all the consequences that are to result from the character which you form, and are to transmit to your posterity!
And you who never are to bear a mother’s name, but must toil for the children of others with little earthly honor or reward, remember that the blessed Lord “took upon himself the form of a servant;” that he came “not to be ministered to, but to minister;” that those who voluntarily take the lowest place are most likely to stand highest at last; that all sincere service is accepted and precious; and that our labors in this life are to bear their fruits through everlasting ages.
Remember that you have a Father in heaven who sympathizes in all your cares, pities your griefs, makes allowances for your defects, and is endeavoring by trials, as well as by blessings, to fit you for the right fulfillment of your high and holy calling.
But the heaviest care and sorrow that ever oppress a woman who, as housekeeper, has the control of children and servants, are her responsibilities as to the eternal destiny of those guided by her teachings and example. Our cruel war took thousands of our noblest youth to terrible sufferings in prisons and battle-fields, and to a torturing death. Multitudes of these sacrificed their all to save their country as really as did our Lord when he suffered for the whole world. And yet many of these martyred heroes gave no evidence of that change which their bereaved parents were trained to believe could alone save their beloved ones from everlasting misery. How many mothers have hid in silent anguish this never-healed wound—this crushing sorrow!
The most available remedy for such distress is much that is suggested in Chapters XXV. and XXVIII.; and the following queries may aid in obtaining the true teachings of the Bible on these momentous questions: