The Meeker herald., 1897-10-23
HOMES SEAmY SIDE.
Small Miscrics Which No Art Can Proven
or Subdue.

SD1AA oAlBVI1C6 " men NO iAEt VAN
Subdue.
\ grent deal is said and written now
ndays about the art OF homemakine,
while very little thought is expended
upon the fact that in the home certain
small miseries arise and flourish which
no art can better or subdue.
In most homes there are great capa-
bilities for happiness, and SO in direct
proportion of unhappiness. Not every
man or woman, however well-inten-
toned, true, and conscientious, can
make the home what it ought to be.
And one of the most fruitful causes of
unhappness, next to bad temper, is to
be found in poor housekeeping.
Many n woman, in every respect ad-
mirable and intelligent beyond the av-
crage, cannot entirely grnsp the mys-
tcries of housekeeping. And that it
is not matter of intelligence is shown
by the fact that some of the best and
most skillful housewives have been
those who turned their attention to
little else than the ordering of their
dinners and the scrupulous neatness
of their homes. And who shall say that
these did not make success Of house
keeping? So many, many things enter
into the housekeeping for the good or
ill of the household. The wife or house
keeping sister may be orderly, the hus-
band or brothers the reverse; or the
wife totally regardless of system, while
the husband counts misplaced article
or n late breakfast an unpardonab!es sin
for which no future punctuality or neat
ness may condore; and these things
occurring day after day, year in and
year out, a consequent struggle en-
sues which renders life a mnrtyrdom.
The more trivial the occasion, the more
bitter the sense of defeat.
"Oh," said woman, whose house,
keeping was to her as the grinding
of the pilgrims pebbles iii his shoes,
81 know ] am q miserable failure Us
n housekecpcr! I can do half a dozen
things well, but cannot keep house,
Now there is no more reason in the
world why that woman should wear
herself into nervous prostrntion trying
to do a thing that in all her life she
will never compass than there is that
any man should become lawyer when
his tastes and aptitude are for medi-
cine or mechanism.
'My wife and l are much fonder OF
each other since we sit down every day
with n dozen people than when we dined
alone" said jolly husband, who went
through life very respectfully and hap
PLY, though he never had home. 1t
is sad, but nevertheless true, that the
dispositions of some couples change en-
tirely for the better as soon as they
arc freed from the shackies of house
keeping. Faultfinding ceases, anxious
lines smooth away, and both husband
and wife draw a long breath of relief.
/ have known most devoted hus-
band and wife who, after the various
domestic complications caused by the
civil war, looked the matter OF house
keeping squarely in the face. The wife,
no longer young, felt that she could not,
without great personal exertion and un-
told worry, take up housekeeping on
a totally different basis from that with
which she had been familiar, and her
husband was wise and considerate
enough to accept her view of the s1tu-
alton. And to the end of their lives
they boarded. So it goes. Work that
to one woman is pleasant, to another
one is irksome; but there is no use IN
frctting over circumstances-it Ii mr.
better to accept the inevitable with good
grace-Harper's Bazar.