Happiness and Marriage | Page 9

next thing I knew my husband didn't have so much business downtown, and he had more things he wanted to tell me. I found we were nearer than I ever dreamed we'd be.
You see, I had become more comfortable to live with. I had quit trying to draw him nearer, and behold, he was already near.
In the old days I lived strenuously. I hustled so to get the house and the children and myself just so, that I got my aura into a regular snarl. My husband being a healthy animal, felt the snarl before he saw the immaculateness; and like any healthy animal he snarled back--and had business downtown. He responded to my real mental and emotional state, responded against his will many times; and I did not know it. I supposed him perverse and impossible of pleasing. I knew I had tried my best (according to my lights, which it had not occurred to me to doubt), but it never entered my cranium that he had tried, too. I looked upon the outward appearance--my immaculate appearance, met by fault-finding or indifference I Poor me! Perverse he!
Poor Martha, troubled about many things, when only one thing is needful--a quiet mind and faithful soul. History does not state if Martha had a husband. If she did, he was perpetually downtown. And Jesus preferred Mary, the Comfortable One, to Martha. Poor lonesome Martha! And she tried so hard to please.
I used to know a woman who never did a thing but look sweet. She was pretty and sympathetic and cheery. Her husband and six children idolized her, and fairly fell over themselves to please her and keep the home beautiful for her. There was physical energy galore lavished gladly by the family, in doing what is commonly considered the mother's work.
And there was apparently nothing whatever the matter with that woman, who was always sweet and pretty as a new blown rose, and looked not a day over twenty. She was simply born tired and wouldn't work. Of course the neighbors said things about her; but nobody could say things to such a sweet tempered, cordial and pretty woman. And there'd have been razors flying through the air if anybody had dared hint to that husband or one of those children that mother was anything less than perfection. The family explanation was that "mother is not strong."
But that mother did more for that family than all the others put together. She made the atmosphere, and she was the life-giving sun around which husband and children revolved, and from which they received the real Light of Life--the power which develops the good in us.
The mother's main business in life was that of appreciating. She was the confidante, the counsellor, the optimistic teacher, and the appreciative audience for six children and a husband, besides a lot of neighbors who carried their troubles to her. She performed more mental work than it takes to manage a billion dollar trust. She kept six children, not only out of mischief, but happily busy at all sorts of household and outdoor work which it was well for them to know. They learned to keep house and farm by keeping them, whilst she sat by and enthused and directed their efforts. She made them love it all. She helped them over the hard places in their school work and enthused them to do better work. They carried off the school prizes under her admiring eyes, and ran straight to lay them in her lap and receive that proud and happy smile of hers.
Her husband worked like a slave with the heart of a king. She thought him the best, bravest, brightest of men, and told him so a dozen times a day, besides looking it every time he came in range of her big, loving brown eyes and smooth, rosy cheeks.
I never heard of an unkind word in that family, and those six children grew up into splendid young manhood and womanhood. Their mother is still the blessed sun of their existence. She is prettier, healthier and happier now, and so proud of her fine children.
And she is up-to-date. She has studied and read with her whole family and is interested with them in the world's present events, art, literature and religion.
Do you think that woman ever complains of loneliness, or "tries so hard" to draw husband or children "nearer"? No. She long ago chose the "one thing needful"--a faith-full heart. Her physical strength would not bear much strain without depressing her faith-full-ness; therefore she left the physical labor out, as less important. To her the Life was more than meat or raiment, so she ministered to the Life--to the joy of living. A stronger woman, physically, could have ministered more efficiently to the physical side without neglecting