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the children
and myself just so, that I got my aura into a regular snarl. My
husband being a healthy animal, felt the snarl before he saw the
immaculateness; and like any healthy animal he snarled back - and had business
downtown. He responded to my real mental and emotional state, responded
against his will many times; and I did not know it. I supposed him perverse
and impossible of pleasing. I knew I had tried my best (according to
my lights, which it had not occurred to me to doubt), but it never
entered my cranium that he had tried, too. I looked upon the outward
appearance - my immaculate appearance, met by fault-finding or indifference I
Poor me! Perverse he! Poor Martha,
troubled about many things, when only one thing is needful - a
quiet mind and faithful soul. History does not state if Martha had a
husband. If she did, he was perpetually downtown. And Jesus preferred
Mary, the Comfortable One, to Martha. Poor lonesome Martha! And she tried
so hard to please. I used to know
a woman who never did a thing but look sweet. She was pretty and
sympathetic and cheery. Her husband and six children idolized her,
and fairly fell over themselves to please her and keep the home beautiful
for her. There was physical energy galore lavished gladly by the
family, in doing what is commonly considered the mother's work. And there was
apparently nothing whatever the matter with that woman, who was always
sweet and pretty as a new blown rose, and looked not a day over
twenty. She was simply born tired and wouldn't work. Of course the neighbors
said things about her; but nobody could say things to such a sweet
tempered, cordial and pretty woman. And there'd have been razors flying
through the air if anybody had dared hint to that husband or one of
those children that mother was anything less than perfection. The family
explanation was that "mother is not strong." But that
mother did more for that family than all the others put together. She
made the atmosphere, and she was the life-giving sun around which
husband and children revolved, and from which they received the real Light
of Life - the power which develops the good in us. The mother's
main business in life was that of appreciating. She was the
confidante, the counsellor, the optimistic teacher, and the appreciative
audience for six children and a husband, besides a lot of neighbors who
carried their troubles to her. She performed more mental work than it
takes to manage a billion dollar trust. She kept six children, not
only out of mischief, but happily busy at all sorts of household and
outdoor work which it was well for them to know. They learned to
keep house and farm by keeping them, whilst she sat by and enthused and
directed their efforts. She made them love it all. She helped them
over the hard places in their school work and enthused them
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