(Sometimes they mean the same thing!)
Never lose sight of the truth that you are as respectable in your position as the president’s wife in hers, while you perform the duties of that position soberly, honestly and in the fear of God—so much more respectable in your safe, honorable home shelter than the flashy, fast shop-girl and unhealthy, underfed and overdressed factory girl in hers, that we, who are sincerely interested in you, can not but wonder that every clear-headed, modest girl does not see this.
As a last word: Don’t keep overstrict account of “work you were not engaged to do.” I know of no business in the world in which a faithful conscientious worker does not do much for which he is not paid—at least, not paid in money. Dozens of unforeseen tasks, big and little, are coming up, all the time, in every trade and profession, and for everybody from the president down to a peanut peddler. The blessed Book we spoke of just now commands us to do whatever is laid to our hand, “as unto the Lord, and not unto men.” One and all, we should find delight in these extra labors if we could, in our hearts, determine to do them “as unto the dear Lord,” whose mercies to us are past counting. Do what you are “engaged” to do, as unto the employer whose wages you receive, and offer the “extras” as a free-will offering to your Heavenly Father.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
Read and obey the text in this spirit, and that “so” becomes the most important word in this, or in any language.
I hope that you will, in the Father’s good time, become the happy mistress of your own home. In which case you will, I venture to say, keep house and make home the better for the discipline of mind and the adjustment of duties learned in the daily routine of housework. This is your apprenticeship.
DINNER
This, the most important meal of the day, is attended with a certain degree of ceremony in the most modest household. Breakfast may be hurried over in haste that is not unseemly when one considers that the day’s work is all ahead of the family, and luncheon may dwindle down to a “cold bite” eaten standing. Everybody must dine, and dining is always “business.” A dinner party is the most serious of social functions, and even a family dinner follows a prescribed order. There must be a beginning, a middle and an end. Plates must be changed, for even in the backwoods, meat and pudding are not set on the table at the same time.
This is as it should be. If we would have
“Good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both,”