TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 46, 23 February 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRIALS OF HOUSEKEEPING.

'T.ord. dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone! Bid her, therefore,-that she help me."—Luke x, -10.

(Concluded.)

Again; there is the trial of severe economy. Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are subjected to it—some under more, and some under less stress of circumstances. Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars, and take very eostry dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe In demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of womenattempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the bills come in. The woman is the banker of the house-

hold; she is the president, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk, and there is a panic every few weeks. This thirty years' war against high prices,, this perpetual study of economies, this life-long attempt to keep the outgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers. Oh my sister, this is a part of the Divine discipline. H it were best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front windows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked fifty times from the barrel in the pantry, the barrel, like the one of /arepath.'would be full; and the shoos of the children would last as lons as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness— forty years. Besides that, this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the contrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none of the nuisances of catering' for appetites. Ami In the land of the white robe they never have to mend anything, and the air m that hill-country makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man owns his own house, and a mansion at that It will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven if you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be so great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of life, if in this world you had a country seat; but if you have walked with tired feet in this world, what a glorious change to mount celestial equipage; and if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom, oh, the joy of an eternity in which you shall have nothing to do except what you choose to do. Martha has had no drudgery for eighteen centuries. I quarrel with the theologians who want to distribute all the thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes, and the Hugh Latimers. and the Theban Legion Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be kent for Christian housekeepers, un. what a change from here to there-from the time when they put down .the rollingpin to when they take up the sceptre. If Chatsworth Park and the VanderbiU Mansion on Fifth Avenue were to be lifted into the Celestial City, they would be considered uninhabitable rookeries and glorified Lazarus would be ashamed to be going in and out of either of them There are many housekeepers who could get along with their toils if It were not for sickness and trouble The fact to, one-half of the women of the land are more or less invalids. The mountain lass who has never had an ache or pain. nm> Consider household toil inconsiderable and toward evening she may skip \way miles to the fields and drive home the Sue and she may, until ten o'clock a ni-ht fill the house with laughing racket, but oh to do the work of life with wornout constitution, when whooping-coufih has been raging for six weeks in the Household, making the night as sleepless as the day-that is not so easy. Perhaps this comes after the nerves have be-an shattered by some bereavement that has left desolation in every room of the house, and set the crib in the garret, because the occupant has been hushed into a slumber which needs no mother s lullaby Oh, she could provide for the whole group a great deal better than she can for a part of the group, now the rest are gone. Though you may tell her God is taking care of those who are gone, it is mother-like to brood both flocks; and one Wing she puts over the flock in the houss, the other wing she puts over the flock in the grave.

There Is nothing but the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ that will take a woman through the trials of home life. At first there may be a romance or a novelty that will do for a substitute. The marriage hour has just passed, and the perplexities of the household are more than atoned by the joy of being together, and by the fact that when it is late they do not have to discuss the question as to whether it is time to go. The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter of anxiety and reprehension, are a matter of merriment—the loaf of bread turned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight tfiat falls on the cutlery and the mantel ornaments of a new home.

But after awhile the romance is fill gone, and then there is something to be prepared for the table that the book called "Cookery Taught in Twelve Lessons" will not teach. The receipt for making it is not a'handful of this, a cup of that, anil a spoonful of something else. It is not something sweetened with ordinary condiments, or flavoured with ordinary flavours, or baked In ordinary ovens. It is the loaf of domestic happiness; and all the ingredients come down from heaven, and the fruits are plucked from the tree of life, and it is sweetened with the new wine of the kingdom, and it is baked in thft oven of home trial. Solomon wrote out of hiH own experience. He had a wretched home. A man cannot be happy with two wives, much less six hundred; and he says, writing out of his own experience: "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."

How great are the rseponsibllities of housekeepers. Sometimes an indigestible article of food, by its effect upon a commander or king, has defeated an army or overthrown an empire. Housekeepers, by the food they provide, by the couches they spread, by the books they introduce, by the influence they bring around their borne, are deciding the physical, intellectual, moral, eternal destiny of the race. You say your life is one of sacrifice. I know it. But, my sisters, that is the only life worth living. That was Florence Nightingale's life; that was Payson's life; that was Christ's life. We admire it in others: but how very hard it is for us to cultivate ourselves. When In this city, young Doctor Hutchison, having spent a whole night in a diphtheretic-room for the relief of a patient, became saturated with the poison and died, we all felt as if we would like to put garlands on his grave; everybody appreciates that. When in the burning hotel at St. Louis, a young man on the fifth storey broke open the door of the room where his mother was sleeping, and plunged in amid smoke and fire, crying: "Mother! where are you?" and never came out, our hearts applauded that young man. But how few of us have the Christian-like spirit—a willingness to suffer for others? A rough teacher in a school called upon a poor, half-starved !a<J. who had offended against the laws of .the school, and said: "Take off your coat directly, sir." The boy refused to take It off, whereupon the teacher aaid again: "Take off your coat, sir," as he swung the whip through the air. The boy refused; it was not because he was afraid of the lash—he was used to that at homebut it was from shame; he ITad no under^ garment, and as at the third command he pulled slowly off his coat, there went a sob, through the school. They saw then why he did not want to rercove his coat,

and they saw the shoulder blades had almost cut through the skin, and a stout healthy boy rose up and went to the teacher of the school, and said: "Oh, sir. please don't hurt this poor fellow; whin me; see, he's nothing but a poor chap; don't you hurt him, he's poor; whip me."

"Well," paid the teacher, "It's going to nr. a severe whipping; I am willing to take you us a substitute." "Well," said the boy, "I don't care; you whip me, if you will let this poor fellow go." The stout healthy fjoy f|nk the scourging without fin outcry. "Bravo!" says every man; "Bravo!" How many of us are willing to take the scourging, and the suffering, and the toil, and the anxiety for other people. Beautiful thing to admire, but how little wo have of that spirit. God give us that self-denying spirit, so that whether we are in humblQ spheres or in conspicuous spheres, we may perform our whole duty —for this struggle will soon be over.

One of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance of her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we would come In from summer play, and sit down at the table at noon, I remember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the line of grey hair, and how sometimes she would sit down at the table, aud put her head against her wrinkled hand and say: "Well, the fact Is, I'm too tired to eat " Long after she might have delegated this duty to others, she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the matter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for somehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago, in an express train, I shot past that otTi homestead. I looked out of the window, and tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so. one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped me on the shoulder, and said: "De Witt, I sea you are looking out at the scenes of your boyhood." "O, yes," I replied, 'I was looking out at the old place where my mother lived and died." That night, in the cars, the whole scene came back to me. There was the country home. There was the noonday table. There were the Children on cither side of the table—mo.-t of them gone never to come back. At one end of the table, my father, with a smile that never left his countenance even when he lay in his coffin. It was an eighty-six years' smile-not the smile of Inanimation, but of Christian courage and Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful, benignant, Hard-working, aged Christian housekeeper, my mother. She was very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to rest in. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them."