The Cairo bulletin., 1909-08-31
WINDING ONES OWN BUSINESS.


every civilized community who seem
to be able TO find time for every
mans business but their own. They
press their otficious offers of assist
ance in season and out of season with
an energy, zeal and a persistence
which If applied to the conduct of
their own affairs would result in a
finished product well worth while.
But 1t is to be noted that in most
cases persons who neglect their own
business in order to mind anothers
pots and kettles do so from no mo-
tive OF self-sacrificing generosity.
They do ii because there is credit to
be obtained; because they will there
by eXalt themselves and become con-
spicuous; because men will laud, mag
nifty and honor them for their altru-
ism and their public spirit. Generally,
one does not get much credit for
putting ones best efforts into the
home and the family. Your own fam
lily somehow seems to take your devo-
ton as matter of course They
usually regard the father as merely
discharging just obligation, in sup
porting his wife and his children.
They are not properly demonstratiye
and enthusiastic over a fathers num-
berless acts of self-sacrifice and self
effacement. A father, of course. has
h,A iuh To hnt l. a.,, IL,
shall be duly impressed every time
he spends two dollars to buy them
shoes; the loving wife should proper
ly be enraptured when her husband
pays the grocery bill or settles the
iceman's reckoning or gives the milk
man something on account. But ordi-
narily the members of ones own
FAMILY have most diScouraging
habit of taking all these things for
granted and of being demonstrative
only by way of protest when the we'll
spring of fathers generosity runs
dry. They are not as grateful as they
| should be TO the father, who has to
work so hard and do without so
much to put bread in their mouths
and opera tickets in their hands.
OF course with the mother the case
| is different The mother does not de-
serve any particular credit, as the
| father does. All the mother has to do
is to sit at home playing bridge or ex-
pecting callers. Her principal occupa-
ton is to spend the money that the
father earns, and where and how she
manages to spend so prodigious sum
| is one of life's greatest mysteries.
Since the mother is incapable of ap-
preciating the fathers sacrifices, and
| since the children are not properly
| grateful, the father is driven abroad
| for his true valuation, and must go
| beyond the four walls of his own
| home in order to be properly appre-
| ciated. This is why a great many men
| don't support their families properly,
but somehow or other do manage to
find time for everybod's business but
their own. Fl ministers to their own
vanity and egregious self-conceit to
pose as philanthropists, diffusing ben
evidence abroad, however unappreci-
ated they may be by those in the
shelter of their own vine and fig
tree.
On the other hand, there are people
| who content themselves with the idle
query, who then is my neighbour"
without making the slightest effort to
find out. They do not sufficiently con-
Germ themselves in their neighbours
affairs, even supposing that they have
been at the pains to learn who their
neighbor is, They are callously indif-
ferent to the claims of charity. They
make the pernicious activity of the
busybodies who have just been de-
scribed their excuses for listening
with folded hands and impassiye
faces to the plea of the poor and
him that hath no helper" They say:
| There is Mr.. Poser, who starves his
family to feed the heather, and is
so preoccupied with public business
| he neglects his private affairs. | hope
| may never be like him. No, am
very sorry; but / think charity be-
| gins at Jerusalem, and my benevo-
lence begins and ends right here in
| my own home
The latter class and the former
represent the opposite extremes. There
is happy medium somewhere be-
tween. TO discharge ones first and
| foremost duty-that of making fam
| lily 1.-The happier on the whole for his
| presencs"-one has not necessarily
to turn a deaf ear to those invoking
| aid for their INDECENT selves or for
benevolent enterprises in which they
are concerned. That man or woman
| lives disproportioned, lopsided
life, who knows no middle course be-
| tween being gifthorse for the whole
community to ride and lending a
| hnx, eli g.. h,tvN