No matter how heavy your burdens, your experience reflects that of hundreds of others. It may be a mean kind of misery that loves company. The knowledge that others are fighting and toiling bravely along the same line with ourselves; that others have conquered the circumstances which oppose us, braces us for renewed effort. What woman has done, woman may do again.
You are far from being hopelessly “mired;” you have what is called “a good fighting chance” for life and usefulness. You have one tremendous advantage, a solid foothold to begin with, in the certainty that you are in the right path.
The confident assurance of this is half the battle. The other half is in doing your work as it comes to your hand. Don’t cultivate “a long reach.” It never pays. You “don’t get ahead one inch.” Perhaps God means for you to move by quarter-inches. He has ten thousand ways of disciplining His children, and so teaching them to make the very best of themselves. It is as certain as that He rules the heavens, that He knows just what sort of training is good for you. Your husband, your children, your home, are your working capital, a loan from Him—your talents, if you like that figure better. They are more than worth all the labor and the worries that fall into your lot.
Husband, children, home, work and worry fill to-day full. Hence the folly, and the danger, and the sin of “the long reach.” The one coming guest whom you should never welcome is to-morrow’s possible troubles. The children are not to be educated today, nor is John ill or dead at the present moment, and the “lonesome” maid does not go until her month is up. The faith that removes mountains wears short-sighted glasses and brings them to bear upon the work in hand.
This is not preaching, but practical philosophy. Try how it will work for a week—then a month—then a year.
Keep your house as well as you can for John, for the babies, for yourself, and let the neighbors run theirs to suit themselves. Comparisons, according to Dogberry, are “odorous.” Comparison of this sort savors of discontent and trouble. Mind your own business and take your business in sections.
“Magnify your office.” You are as important in your kingdom as was Queen Victoria in hers, and have not one worry where she had a thousand.
Dust may be disease in embryo, and should be done away with by the use of all reasonable means. Overwork and worry kill more women in one year than the neglected deposit upon picture cords slays in a century. “Let all things be done decently and in order” is a capital working motto, but reserve the right of private judgment in determining what constitute order and decency. Study what you can leave undone, or what may be laid over for another day with least discomfort to yourself and others.
Spare yourself, and study Slighting (so-called) as a Useful, Life-lengthening Art.