Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1912-11-25
The Home Circle
Thoughts from the Editorial Pen

q lnOuSnUS from Ine Editorial Fen q
Once there was a woman who did
things. Left with half a dozen chill
dren to support, she took in board
ers. And she made it pay She gave
satisfaction to her boarders. and she
made living for her children, be-
sides putting something aside each
year toward the education she was
determined they should have. Much
of the actual work of the house was
done by herself, and all of the plan
ming and marketing.
From having led a sheltered exist
ence, without previous knowledge of
business, she was equipped, when
finally the burden fell upon her, with
nothing beyond intelligence and en-
ergy to relp upon. Yet she planned
and managed, and showed marked
executive ability, besides untiring
ambition.
She was ambitious, too, that the
hard work she had to do should not
rob her children of the intelligent
comradeship to which they were en-
titled. So she kept abreast of the
times. She read and studied, often
far into the night, that she might be
able to talk on the subjects she
wished them to be informed upon.
Also, she kept up her music, and
she kept her youth, and she never let
herself slip into that soddenness
which is so often the fate of the
worker who follows the line of least
resistance.
1t was not an easy path she set for
the feet to follow. 1t was rugged
and stony and hilly, and often she
seemed too weary to keep on climb
ing. Yet, when disbursement
would try to get in an entering
wedge, she would look at her chill
dren and feel her strength renewed
for the struggle.
All this she did, in a town which
had known her as girl and woman
| and no one recognized the work she
was doing. To old friends she was
only the keeper of boarding house,
in whom their interest had lapsed-
in fact coincidentaly with their for
tunes For such is the way of the
world.
But she, with her face turned up
ward toward the high goal she had
set for herself-the best development
of her sacred charges, her children
had not time to notice that she
walked alone, so far as human
friends were concerned.
And then one day a wonderful
thing happened to her, just as it
happens to the princess of a fairy
tale. A relative whom she had never
seen left her a fortune, because he
did not have anybody else to leave it
to-a quite substantial fortune. so
that she was able to give up taking
boarders. She bought a beautiful
nome and | don't know what all be-
sides. But the important thing was
that she kept right on doing what
she had been doing-minus the hard
work of keeping boarders-she kept
right on trying to mould the thought
OF her young, that they might make
brave, honest cultured, God-fearing
men and women.
Her friends of the olden time. be-
fore the period of her poorer days,
did all that they could to hamper
her high ambition. She had sudden
ly grown so dear, so dear, that they
aid not want to leave her alone an
hour, with her children and her
| ideals.
They wanted her to drive with
them in their utomobiles-now
that she had one of her own. They
wanted to entertain her in their beau
tiful homes now that she had a
beautiful home of her own.
And how they did admire her!
Rather, they admired her hats, her
gowns, the furnishings of her house,
her landscape gardening, her machine
and all the gew-gaws her money had
bought.
The things that she had accom-
plished, the woman that she was
the work she had done-all these
meant nothing to them.