Here was common-sense, practical, hard-headed training instead of

worry. Bend your sense, your intellect, your time, your energy, to
seeking how to train your children, instead of doing the senseless,
foolish, inane, and utterly useless thing of worrying about them.

Imagine being the child of an anxious parent, who sees sickness in
every unusual move or mood of her boy or girl. A little clearing of
the throat--"I'm sure he's going to have croup or diphtheria." The
girl unconsciously puts her hand to her brow--"What's the matter with
your head, dearie; got a headache?" A lad feels a trifle uncomfortable
in his clean shirt and wiggles about--"I'm sure Tom's coming down with
fever, he's so restless and he looks so flushed!"

God forbid that I should ever appear to caricature the wise care of a
devoted mother. That is not what I aim to do. I seek, with intenseness
of purpose, to show the folly, the absurdity of the anxieties, the
worries, the unnecessary and unreasonable cares of many mothers. For
the moment Fear takes possession of them, some kind of nagging is sure
to begin for the child. "Oh, Tom, you mustn't do this," or, "Maggie,
my darling, you must be careful of that," and the child is not only
nagged, but is thus _placed under bondage to the mother's unnecessary
alarm_. No young life can suffer this bondage without injury. It
destroys freedom and spontaneity, takes away that dash and vigor, that
vim and daring that essentially belong to youth, and should be the
unhampered heritage of every child. I'd far rather have a boy and
girl of mine get sick once in a while--though that is by no means
necessary--than have them subjected to the constant fear that
they might be sick. And when boys and girls wake up to the full
consciousness that their parents' worries are foolish, unnecessary,
and self-created, the mental and moral influence upon them is far more
pernicious than many even of our wisest observers have perceived.

There never was a boy or girl who was worried over, who was not
annoyed, fretted, injured, and cursed by it, instead of being
benefited. The benefit received from the love of the parent was in
spite of the worry, and not because of it. Worry is a hindrance, a
deterrent, a restraint; it is always putting a curbing hand upon the
natural exuberance and enthusiasm of youth. It says, "Don't, don't,"
with such fierce persistence, that it kills initiative, destroys
endeavor, murders naturalness, and drives its victims to deception,
fraud, and secrecy to gain what they feel to be natural, reasonable
and desirable ends.

I verily believe that the parent who forever is saying "Don't" to
her children, is as dangerous as a submarine and as cruel as an
asphyxiating bomb. Life is for _expression_, not _repression_.
Repression is always a proof that a proper avenue for expression has
not yet been found. Quit your "don't-ing," and teach your child to
"do" right. Children absolutely are taught to dread, then dislike, and
finally to hate their parents when they are refused the opportunity of
"doing"--of expressing themselves.

Rather seek to find ways in which they may be active. Give them
opportunities for pleasure, for employment, for occupation. And
remember this, there is as much distance and difference between
"tolerating," "allowing," "permitting" your children to do things, and
"encouraging," "fostering" in them the desire to do them, as there is
distance between the poles. Don't be a dampener to your children, a
discourager, a "don'ter," a sign the moment you appear that they must
"quit" something, that they must repress their enthusiasm, their fun,
their exuberant frolicsomeness, but let them feel your sympathy with
them, your comradeship, your good cheer, that "Father, Mother, is
a jolly good fellow," and my life for it, you will doubtless save
yourself and them much worry in after years.

Hans Christian Andersen's story of _The Ugly Duckling_ is one of the
best illustrations of the uselessness and needlessness of much of the
worry of parents with which I am familiar. How the poor mother duck
worried because one of her brood was so large and ugly. At first she
was willing to accept it, but when everybody else jeered at it, pushed
it aside, bit at it, pecked it on the head, and generally abused it,
and the turkey-cock bore down upon it like a ship in full sail, and
gobbled at it, and its brothers and sisters hunted it, grew more and
more angry with it, and wished the cat would get it and swallow it up,
she herself wished it far and far away. And as the worries grew around
the poor duckling, it ran away. It didn't know enough to have faith
in itself and its own future. The result was the worries of others
affected it to the extent of urging it to flee. For the time being
this enlarged its worries, until at length, falling in with a band of
swans, it felt a strange thrill of fellowship with them in spite of
their grand and beautiful appearance, and, soaring into the air after
them, it alighted into the water, and seeing its own reflection, was
filled with amazement and wonder to find itself no longer an ugly
duckling but--a swan.

Many a mother, father, family generally, have worried over their ugly
duckling until they have driven him, her, out into the world, only to
find out later that their duckling was a swan. And while it was good
for the swan to find out its own nature, the points I wish to make
are that there was no need for all the worry--it was the sign of
ignorance, of a want of perception--and further, the swan would have
developed in its home nest just as surely as it did out in the world,
and would have been saved all the pain and distress its cruel family
visited upon it.

There is still another story, which may as well be introduced here, as
it applies to the unnecessary worry of parents about their young. In
this case, it was a hen that sat on a nest of eggs. When the chickens
were hatched, they all pleased the mother hen but one, and he rushed
to the nearest pond, and, in spite of her fret, fuss, fume, and worry,
insisted upon plunging in. In vain the hen screamed out that he
would drown, her unnatural child was resolved to venture, and to the
amazement of all, he floated perfectly, for he was a duck instead of a
chicken, and his egg was placed under the old hen by mistake.

Mother, father, don't worry about your child. It may be he is a swan;
he may be a duck, instead of the creature you anticipated. Control
your fretfulness and your worry for it cannot possibly change things.
Wait and watch developments and a few days may reveal enough to you
to show you how totally unnecessary all your worries would have been.
Teach yourself to know that worry is evil thought directed either
upon our own bodies or minds, or those of others. Note, I say _evil_
thought. It is not good thought. Good thought so directed would be
helpful, useful, beneficial. This is injurious, harmful, baneful. Evil
thought, worry, directs to the person, or to that part of the body
considered, an injurious and baneful influence that produces pain,
inharmony, unhappiness. It is as if one were to divert a stream of
corroding acid upon a sensitive wound, and do it because we wished to
heal the wound. Worry never once healed a wound, or cured an ill. It
always aggravates, irritates, and, furthermore, helps superinduce the
evil the worrier is afraid of. The fact that you worry about these
things to which I have referred, that you yield your thoughts to them,
and, in your worry, give undue contemplation to them, induces the
conditions you wish to avoid or avert. Hence, if you wish your child
to be well and strong, brave and courageous, it is the height of
cruelty for you to worry over his health, his play, or his exercise.
Better by far leave him alone than bring upon him the evils you dread.
Who has not observed, again and again, the evil that has come from
worrying mothers who were constantly cautioning or forbidding their
children to do that which every natural and normal child longs to
do? Quit your worrying. Leave your child alone. Better by far let
him break a rib, or bruise his nose, than all the time to live in the
bondage of your fears.

Elsewhere I have referred to the fact that we often bring upon our
loved ones the perils we fear. There is a close connection between
our mental states and the objects with which we are surrounded.
Or, mayhap, it would be more correct to say that it is our mental
condition that shapes the actions of those around us in relation to
the things by which they are surrounded. Let me illustrate with an
incident which happened in my own observation. A small boy and girl
had a nervous, ever worrying mother. She was assured that her boy
was bound to come to physical ill, for he was so courageous, so
adventuresome, so daring. To her he was the duck instead of the
chicken she thought she was hatching out. One day he climbed to the
roof of the barn. His sister followed him. The two were slowly, and
in perfect security, "inching" along on the comb of the roof, when the
mother happened to catch sight of them. With a scream of half terror
and half anger, she shouted to them to come down _at once!_ Up to
that moment, I had watched both children with comfort, pleasure, and
assurance of their perfect safety. Their manifest delight in their
elevated position, the pride of the girl in her pet brother's courage,
and his scarcely concealed surprise and pleasure that she should dare
to follow him, were interesting in the extreme. But the moment that
foolish mother's scream rent the air, everything changed instanter.
Both children became nervous, the boy started down the roof, where he
could drop upon a lower roof to safety. His little sister, however,
started down too soon. Her mother's fears unnerved her and she slid,
and falling some twenty-five feet or so, broke her arm.

Then--and here was the cruel fatuity of the whole proceeding--the
mother began to wail and exclaim to the effect that it was just what
she expected. May I be pardoned for calling her a worrying fool. She
could not see that it was her very expectation, and giving voice to
it, in her hourly worryings and in that command that they come down,
that caused the accident. She, herself, alone was to blame; her
unnecessary worry was the cause of her daughter's broken arm.

Christ's constant incitement to his disciples was "Be not afraid!"
He was fully aware of the fact that Job declared: "The thing which I
greatly feared is come upon me."

Hence, worrying mother, curb your worry, kill it, drive it out, for
_your child's sake_. You claim it is for your child's good that
you worry. You are wrong. It is because you are too thoughtless,
faithless, and trustless that you worry, and, if you will pardon me,
_too selfish_. If, instead of giving vent to that fear, worry,
dread, you exercised your reason and faith a little more, and then
self-denial, and refused to give vocal expression to your worry, you
could then claim unselfishness in the interest of your child. But to
put your fears and worries, your dreads and anxieties, around a young
child, destroying his exuberance and joy, surrounding him with the
mental and spiritual fogs that beset your own life is neither wise,
kind, nor unselfish.

Another serious worry that besets many parents is that pertaining
to the courtship or engagement of their children. Here again let me
caution my readers not to construe my admonitions into indifference
to this important epoch in their child's life. I would have them
lovingly, wisely, sagely advise. But there is a vast difference
between this, and the uneasy, fretful, nagging worries that beset so
many parents and which often lead to serious friction. Remember that
it is your child, not you, who has to be suited with a life partner.
The girl who may call forth his warmest affection may be the last
person in the world you would have chosen, yet you are not the one to
be concerned.

In the January, 1916, _Ladies' Home Journal_ there is an excellent
editorial bearing upon this subject, as follows:

A mother got to worrying about the girl to whom her son had
become engaged. She was a nice girl, but the mother felt
that perhaps she was not of a type to stimulate the son
sufficiently in his career. The mother wisely said nothing,
however, until two important facts dawned upon her:

First, that possibly her boy was of the order which did
not need stimulation. As she reflected upon his nature,
his temperament, she arrived at the conclusion that what he
required in a life partner might be someone who would prove a
poultice rather than a mustard plaster or a fly blister.

This was her first discovery.

The second was not precisely like unto it, but was even more
important--that the son, and not the mother, was marrying the
girl. The question as to whether or not the girl would suit
the mother as a permanent companion was a minor consideration
about which she need not vex her soul. The point he had
settled for himself was that here, by God's grace, was the
one maid for him; and since that had been determined the
wise course was for the mother not to waste time and energy
bemusing (worrying) herself over the situation, especially as
the girl offered no fundamental objections.

Thus the mother, of herself, learned a lesson that many
another mother might profitably learn.

How wonderfully in his _Saul_ does Robert Browning set forth the
opposite course to that of the worrier. Here, the active principle
of love and trust are called upon so that it uplifts and blesses its
object. David is represented as filled with a great love for Saul,
which would bring happiness to him. He strives in every way to make
Saul happy, yet the king remains sad, depressed, and unhappy. At
last David's heart and his reason grasp the one great fact of God's
transcending love, and the poem ends with a burst of rapture. His
discovery is that, if his heart is so full of love to Saul, that in
his yearning for his good, he would give him everything, what must
God's love for him be? Of his own love he cries:

Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and
this;

I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,
At this moment,--had love but the warrant love's heart to
dispense.

Then, when God's magnificent love bursts upon him he sings in joy:

--What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? When doors great and small

Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appall?

How utterly absurd, on the face of it, is such a supposition. God
having given so much will surely continue to give. His love so far
proven so great, it _will never cease_.

O! doubting heart of man, of woman, of father, of mother, grieving
over the mental and spiritual lapses of a loved one, grasp this
glorious fact--God's love far transcends thine own. What thou wouldst
do for thy loved one is a minute fraction of what He can do, will do,
_is doing_. Rest in His love. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee;
and in His hands all whom thou lovest are safe.




CHAPTER XI

MARITAL WORRIES


I now approach a difficult part of my subject, yet I do it without
trepidation, fear, or worry as to results. There are, to my mind, a
few fundamental principles to be considered and observed, and each
married couple must learn to fight the battle out for themselves.

Undoubtedly, to most married people, the ideal relationship is where
each is so perfectly in accord with the other--they think alike,
agree, are as one mentally--that there are no irritations, no
differences of opinion, no serious questions to discuss.

Others have a different ideal. They do not object to differences,
serious, even, and wide. They are so thorough believers in the
sanctity of the individuality of each person--that every individual
must live his own life, and thus learn his own lessons, that what they
ask is a love large enough, big enough, sympathetic enough, to embrace
all differences, and in confidence that the "working out" process will
be as sure for one as the other, to rest, content and serene in each
other's love in spite of the things that otherwise would divide them.

This mental attitude, however, requires a large faith in God, a
wonderful belief in the good that is in each person, and a forbearing
wisdom that few possess. Nevertheless, it is well worth striving
for, and its possession is more desirable than many riches. And how
different the outlook upon life from that of the marital worrier.
When a couple begin to live together, they have within themselves
the possibilities of heaven or of hell. The balance between the two,
however, is very slight. There is only a foot, or less, in difference,
between the West and the East on the Transcontinental Divide. I have
stood with one foot in a rivulet the waters of which reached the
Pacific, and the other in one which reached the Atlantic. The marital
divide is even finer than that. It is all in the habit of mind. If one
determines that he, she, will guide, boss, direct, control the other,
one of two or three things is sure to occur.

I. The one mind _will_ control the other, and an individual will live
some one else's life instead of its own. This is the popular American
notion of the life of the English wife. She has been trained during
the centuries to recognize her husband as lord and master, and she
unquestionably and unhesitatingly obeys his every dictate. Without at
all regarding this popular conception as an accurate one, nationally,
it will serve the purpose of illustration.

II. The second alternative is one of sullen submission. If one hates
to "row," to be "nagged," he, she, submits, but with a bad grace,
consumed constantly with an inward rebellion, which destroys love,
leads to cowardly subterfuges, deceptions, and separations.

III. The third outcome is open rebellion, and the results of this are
too well known to need elucidation--for whatever they may be, they
are disastrous to the peace, happiness, and content of the family
relationship.

Yet to show how hard it is to classify actual cases in any formal way,
let me here introduce what I wrote long ago about a couple whom I
have visited many times. It is a husband and wife who are both
geniuses--far above the ordinary in several lines. They have
money--made by their own work--the wife's as well as the husband's,
for she is an architect and builder of fine homes. While they have
great affection one for another, there is a constant undertone of
worry in their lives. Each is too critical of the other. They worry
about trifles. Each is losing daily the sweetness of sympathetic and
joyous comradeship because they do not see eye to eye in all things.
Where a mutual criticism of one's work is agreed upon, and is mutually
acceptable and unirritating, there is no objection to it. Rather
should it be a source of congratulation that each is so desirous of
improving that criticism is welcomed. But, in many cases, it is a
positive and injurious irritant. One meets with criticism, neither
kind nor gentle, out in the world. In the home, both man and woman
need tenderness, sympathy, comradeship--and if there be weaknesses
or failures that are openly or frankly confessed, there should be
the added grace and virtue of compassion without any air of pitying
condescension or superiority. By all means help each other to mend, to
improve, to reach after higher, noble things, but don't do it by
the way of personal criticism, advice, remonstrance, fault-finding,
worrying. If you do, you'll do far more harm than good in ninety-nine
cases out of every hundred. Every human being instinctively, in such
position, consciously or unconsciously, places himself in the attitude
of saying: "I am what I am! Now recognize that, and leave me alone!
My life is mine to learn its lessons in my own way, just the same as
yours is to learn your lessons in your way." This worrying about, and
of each other has proven destructive of much domestic happiness, and
has wrecked many a marital barque, that started out with sails set,
fair wind, and excellent prospects.

Don't worry about each other--_help_ each other by the loving sympathy
that soothes and comforts. Example is worth a million times more than
precept and criticism, no matter how lovingly and wisely applied,
and few men and women are wise enough to criticise and advise
_perpetually_, without giving the recipient the feeling that he is
being "nagged."

Granted that, from the critic's standpoint, every word said may be
true, wise, and just. This does not, by any means, make it wise to
say it. The mental and spiritual condition of the recipient _must_ be
considered as of far more importance than the condition of the giver
of the wise exhortations. The latter is all right, he doesn't need
such admonitions; the other does. The important question, therefore,
should be: "Is he ready to receive them?" If not, if the time is
unpropitious, the mental condition inauspicious, better do, say,
nothing, than make matters worse. But, unfortunately, it generally
happens that at such times the critic is far more concerned at
unbosoming himself of his just and wise admonitions than he is as to
whether the time is ripe, the conditions the best possible, for the
word to be spoken. The sacred writer has something very wise and
illuminating to say upon this subject. Solomon says: "A word spoken in
due season, how good is it!" Note, however, that it must be spoken "in
due season," to be good. The same word spoken out of season may be,
and often is, exceedingly bad. Again he says: "A word fitly spoken
is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." But it must be _fitly_
spoken to be worthy to rank with apples of gold.




CHAPTER XII

THE WORRY OF THE SQUIRREL CAGE


Reference has already been made to _The Squirrel Cage_, by Dorothy
Canfield. Better than any book I have read for a long time, it reveals
the causes of much of the worry that curses our modern so-called
civilized life. These causes are complex and various. They include
_vanity, undue attention to what our neighbors think of us, a false
appreciation of the values of things_, and they may all be summed
up into what I propose to call--with due acknowledgement to Mrs.
Canfield--_the Worry of the Squirrel Cage_.

I will let the author express her own meaning of this latter term. If
the story leading up seems to be long please seek to read it in the
light of this expression:[A]

[Footnote A: Reprinted from "The Squirrel-Cage" by Dorothy Canfield
($1.35 net); published by Henry Holt and Company, New York City.]

When Mr. and Mrs. Emery, directly after their wedding in a
small Central New York village, had gone West to Ohio,
they had spent their tiny capital in building a small
story-and-a-half cottage, ornamented with the jig-saw work and
fancy turning popular in 1872, and this had been the nucleus
of their present rambling, picturesque, many-roomed home.
Every step in the long series of changes which had led from
its first state to its last had a profound and gratifying
significance for the Emerys and its final condition,
prosperous, modern, sophisticated, with the right kind of
wood work in every room that showed, with the latest, most
unobtrusively artistic effects in decoration, represented
their culminating well-earned position in the inner circle of
the best society of Endbury.

Moreover, they felt that just as the house had been attained
with effort, self-denial, and careful calculations, yet still
without incurring debt, so their social position had been
secured by unremitting diligence and care, but with no loss of
self-respect or even of dignity. They were honestly proud of
both their house and of their list of acquaintances and saw
no reason to regard them as less worthy achievements of an
industrious life than their four creditable grown-up children
or Judge Emery's honorable reputation at the bar.

The two older children, George and Marietta, could remember
those early struggling days with as fresh an emotion as
that of their parents. Indeed, Marietta, now a competent,
sharp-eyed matron of thirty-two, could not see the most
innocuous colored lithograph without an uncontrollable wave
of bitterness, so present to her mind was the period when they
painfully groped their way out of chromos.

The particular Mrs. Hollister who, at the time the Emerys
began to pierce the upper crust, was the leader of Endbury
society, had discarded chromos as much as five years before.
Mrs. Emery and Marietta, newly admitted to the honor of her
acquaintance, wondered to themselves at the cold monotony of
her black and white engravings. The artlessness of this wonder
struck shame to their hearts when they chanced to learn that
the lady had repaid it with a worldly-wise amusement at their
own highly-colored waterfalls and snow-capped mountain-peaks.
Marietta could recall as piercingly as if it were yesterday,
in how crestfallen a chagrin she and her mother had gazed at
their parlor after this incident, their disillusioned eyes
open for the first time to the futility of its claim to
sophistication. As for the incident that had led to the
permanent retiring from their table of the monumental
salt-and-pepper 'caster' which had been one of their
most prized wedding presents, the Emerys refused to allow
themselves to remember it, so intolerably did it spell
humiliation.

In these quotations the reader has the key to the situation--worry to
become as good as one's neighbors, if not better. _This is the worry
of the squirrel cage_.

Lydia is Mrs. Emery's baby girl, her pet, her passionate delight.
She has been away to a fine school. She knows nothing of the ancient
struggles to attain position and a high place in society. Those
struggles were practically over before she appeared on the scene.

On the occasion of her final home-coming her mother makes great
preparations to please her, yet the worry and the anxiety, are
revealed in her conversation with her older daughter:

'Oh, Marietta, how _do_ you suppose the house will seem
to Lydia after she has seen so much? I hope she won't be
disappointed. I've done so much to it this last year, perhaps
she won't like it. And oh, I _was_ so tired because we weren't
able to get the new sideboard put up in the dining-room
yesterday!'

'Really, Mother, you must draw the line about Lydia. She's
only human. I guess if the house is good enough for you and
father it is good enough for her.'

'That's just it, Marietta--that's just what came over me!
_Is_ what's good enough for us good enough for Lydia? Won't
anything, even the best, in Endbury be a come-down for her?'

The attainments of Mrs. Emery both as to wealth and social position,
however, were not reached by her daughter Marietta and her husband,
but in the determination to make it appear as if they were, Marietta
thus exposes her own life of worry in a talk with her father:

'Keeping up a two-maid and a man establishment on a one-maid
income, and mostly not being able to hire the one maid. There
aren't _any_ girls to be had lately. It means that I have to
be the other maid and the man all of the time, and all three,
part of the time.' She was starting down the step, but paused
as though she could not resist the relief that came from
expression. 'And the cost of living--the necessities are bad
enough, but the other things--the things you have to have not
to be out of everything! I lie awake nights. I think of it
in church. I can't think of anything else but the way
the expenses mount up. Everybody getting so reckless and
extravagant and I _won't_ go in debt! I'll come to it, though.
Everybody else does. We're the only people that haven't
oriental rugs now. Why, the Gilberts--and everybody knows how
much they still owe Dr. Melton for Ellen's appendicitis,
and their grocer told Ralph they owe him several hundred
dollars--well, they have just got an oriental rug that they
paid a hundred and sixty dollars for. Mrs. Gilbert said they
'just _had_ to have it, and you can always have what you have
to have.' It makes me sick! Our parlor looks so common! And
the last dinner party we gave cost--'

Another phase of the _squirrel cage worry_ is expressed in this terse
paragraph:

'Father keeps talking about getting one of those
player-pianos, but Mother says they are so new you can't tell
what they are going to be. She says they may get to be too
common.'

Bye and bye it comes Lydia's turn to decide what place she and her new
husband are to take in Endbury society, and here is what one frank,
sensible man says about it:

'It may be all right for Marietta Mortimer to kill herself
body and soul by inches to keep what bores her to death to
have--a social position in Endbury's two-for-a-cent society,
but, for the Lord's sake, why do they make such a howling
and yelling just at the tree when Lydia's got the tragically
important question to decide as to whether that's what _she_
wants? It's like expecting her to do a problem in calculus in
the midst of an earthquake.'

And the following chapter is a graphic presentation as to how Lydia
made her choice "in perfect freedom"--oh, the frightful sarcasm of the
phrase--during the excitement of the wedding preparations and under
the pressure of expensive gifts and the ideas of over enthusiastic
"society" friends.

Lydia now began her own "squirrel-cage" existence, even her husband
urges her into extravagance in spite of her protest by saying,
"Nothing's too good for you. And besides, it's an asset. The mortgage
won't be so very large. And if we're in it, we'll just have to live up
to it. It'll be a stimulus."

One of the sane characters of the book is dear, lovable, gruff Mr.
Melton, who is Lydia's godfather, and her final awakening is largely
due to him. One day he finds Lydia's mother upstairs sick-a-bed, and
thus breaks forth to his godchild:

'About your mother--I know without going upstairs that she is
floored with one or another manifestation of the great disease
of _social-ambitionitis_. But calm yourself. It's not so bad
as it seems when you've got the right doctor, I've practiced
for thirty years among Endbury ladies. They can't spring
anything new on me. I've taken your mother through doily fever
induced by the change from tablecloths to bare tops, through
portiere inflammation, through afternoon tea distemper,
through _art-nouveau_ prostration and mission furniture palsy,
not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity over the
necessity of having her maids wear caps. I think you can trust
me, whatever dodge the old malady is working on her.'

And later in speaking of Lydia's sister he affirms:

'Your sister Marietta is not a very happy woman. She has too
many of your father's brains for the life she's been shunted
into. She might be damming up a big river with a finely
constructed concrete dam, and what she is giving all her
strength to is trying to hold back a muddy little trickle with
her bare hands. The achievement of her life is to give on
a two-thousand-a-year income the appearance of having five
thousand like your father. She does it; she's a remarkably
forceful woman, but it frets her. She ought to be in better
business, and she knows it, though she won't admit it.'

Oh, the pity of it, the woe of it, the horror of it, for it is one of
the curses of our present day society and is one of the causes of
many a man's and woman's physical and mental ruin. In the words of our
author elsewhere:

They are killing themselves to get what they really don't want
and don't need, and are starving for things they could easily
have by just putting out their hands.

Where life's struggle is reduced to this kind of thing, there is
little compensation, hence we are not surprised to read that:

Judge Emery was in the state in which of late the end of the
day's work found him--overwhelmingly fatigued. He had not an
ounce of superfluous energy to answer his wife's tocsin, while
she was almost crying with nervous exhaustion. That Lydia's
course ran smooth through a thousand complications was not
accomplished without an incalculable expenditure of nervous
force on her mother's part. Dr. Melton had several times of
late predicted that he would have his old patient back under
his care again. Judge Emery, remembering this prophecy, was
now moved by his wife's pale agitation to a heart-sickening
mixture or apprehension for her and of recollection of his own
extreme discomfort whenever she was sick.

Yet in spite of this intense tension, she was unable to stop--felt
she must go on, until finally, a breakdown intervened and she was
compelled to lay by.

On another page a friend tells of his great-aunt's experience:

'She told me that all through her childhood her family was
saving and pulling together to build a fine big house. They
worked along for years until, when she was a young lady, they
finally accomplished it; built a big three-story house that
was the admiration of the countryside. Then they moved in. And
it took the womenfolks every minute of their time, and more
to keep it clean and in order; it cost as much to keep it up,
heated, furnished, repaired, painted and everything the way a
fine house should be, as their entire living used to cost. The
fine big grounds they had laid out to go with the mansion took
so much time to--'

Finally Lydia herself becomes awakened, startled as she sees what
everybody is trying to make her life become and she bursts out to her
sister:

'I'm just frightened of--everything--what everybody expects me
to do, and to go on doing all my life, and never have any
time but to just hurry faster and faster, so there'll be
more things to hurry about, and never talk about anything but
_things!_' She began to tremble and look white, and stopped
with a desperate effort to control herself, though she
burst out at the sight of Mrs. Mortimer's face of despairing
bewilderment. 'Oh, don't tell me you don't see at all what
I mean. I can't say it! But you _must_ understand. Can't we
somehow all stop--_now!_ And start over again! You get muslin
curtains and not mend your lace ones, and Mother stop fussing
about whom to invite to that party--that's going to cost more
than he can afford, Father says--it makes me _sick_ to be
costing him so much. And not fuss about having clothes just
so--and Paul have our house built little and plain, so it
won't be so much work to take care of it and keep it clean.
I would so much rather look after it myself than to have
him kill himself making money so I can hire maids that you
_can't_--you say yourself you can't--and never having any time
to see him. Perhaps if we did, other people might, and we'd
all have more time to like things that make us nicer to like.

And when her sister tried to comfort her she continued:

'You do see what I mean! You see how dreadful it is to look
forward to just that--being so desperately troubled over
things that don't really matter--and--and perhaps having
children, and bringing them to the same thing--when there must
be so many things that do matter!'

Then, to show how perfectly her sister understood, the author makes
that wise and perceptive woman exclaim:

'Mercy! Dr. Melton's right! She's perfectly wild with nerves!
We must get her married as soon as ever we can!'

Lydia gives a reception. Here is part of the description:

Standing as they were, tightly pressed in between a number of
different groups, their ears were assaulted by a disjointed
mass of stentorian conversation that gave a singular illusion
as if it all came from one inconceivably voluble source,
the individuality of the voices being lost in the screaming
enunciation which, as Mrs. Sandworth had pointed out, was a
prerequisite of self-expression under the circumstances.

They heard: '_For over a month and the sleeves were too see
you again at Mrs. Elliott's I'm pouring there from four I've
got to dismiss one with plum-colored bows all along five
dollars a week and the washing out and still impossible! I
was there myself all the time and they neither of thirty-five
cents a pound for the most ordinary ferns and red carnations
was all they had, and we thought it rather skimpy under the
brought up in one big braid and caught down with at Peterson's
they were pink and white with--' ... 'Oh, no, Madeleine! that
was at the Burlingame's_.' Mrs. Sandworth took a running jump
into the din and sank from her brother's sight, vociferating:
'_The Petersons had them of old gold, don't you remember, with
little_--'

The doctor, worming his way desperately through the masses of
femininity, and resisting all attempts to engage him in the
local fray, emerged at length into the darkened hall where
the air was, as he told himself in a frenzied flight of
imagination, less like a combination of a menagerie and a
perfume shop. Here, in a quiet corner, sat Lydia's father
alone. He held in one hand a large platter piled high with
wafer-like sandwiches, which he was consuming at a Gargantuan
rate, and as he ate, he smiled to himself.

'Well, Mr. Ogre,' said the doctor, sitting down beside him
with a gasp of relief; 'let a wave-worn mariner into your den,
will you?'

Provided with an auditor, Judge Emery's smile broke into an
open laugh. He waved the platter toward the uproar in the next
rooms: 'A boiler factory ain't in it with woman, lovely woman,
is it?' he put it to his friend.