The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-04-04

devotion to the trifing detail, he loses sight of the great, the fundamental idea with which he started to make his pie ture. The main outline has become merged into the insignificant line. There is no clarity, no boldness in his work. It does not tell us anything. It has lost its meaning, because the single idea has become multiplied into thousands of little niggling lines, with no special purpose, with vitality of their own.
 As the unnecessary line is to the pie ture, so is the degree of polish, the iso- lated speclx of dust the footprint of the cat or dog, to the over-carefu housewife. She will suffer the peace and the repose of all the inmates of the house to be dis turbed whilst she removes the dust or in- creases the polish or obliterates the foot prints of the family pet from her floors or furniture. It may be that the win dow curtains do not hang in just the way that she has decreed that they shall hang. Perhaps the maid, or the daughter, or someone else, has looped them back too far, or not allowed them to fall into the correct folds The circumstance is sufficiently important to upset her for 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour even after the fault has been remedied.
 It is an undoubted fact that women far more frequent than men, are the victims of the "trifle habit That is
 
 the lives led by men with those led by the average woman. The man goes out into the world every day. He comes up against the big things. There is no escaping them for they are about him all the time. But the woman stays at home. The little things are more noticeable than the big, in her life. That the really important things are in her keeping we all know. We realize that it is the woman's part 10 make the home the best place in the world, and that no work is really so important as hers-that there Is nothing that can compare with it in the mater of worth. The difficulty is that the woman's work is so overlaid with trifling detail that she often fails to see the relation that it bears to the whole
 A finer reception and truer one of proportion are needed for the home- maker than for the Colossus, who would bestride the world. He has a cruder a more obvious task than has the woman and the mother. It is so difficult and therefore not so well worth doing. Women must be ever on the lookout that the tyranny of tri- fles does not enslave them. If We think oetail is necessary, we must See that detail is only useful insofar as it helps the main design. Detail must be in proportion, or IL IS certaln to Spoll the picture. If we look at nature-the wisest teacher we can have to learn from-we shall see at once that there is no tyranny that the insignificant detail is never allowed to intrude. The trees do not fret because the wind ruff rles their leaves; the reeds do not com plain when the stream bends them with its current; the face of the lily is smeared with the pollen from it's | a( but some of the pollen has been taken to another flower by the bees, to do its appointed work. and the lily smiles happily up at the sun.
 And so may we smile. when, freed once and for all from the tyranny of trifles. we can bear With calmness the little annoyances of daily life, realiz- ing that they are of the fabric which we are weaving, which neither moth nor rust shall corrupt