Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

to begin with, in the certainty that you are in the right path. The confident assurance of this is half the battle. The other half is in doing your work as it comes to your hand. Don’t cultivate “a long reach.” It never pays. You “don’t get ahead one inch.” Perhaps God means for you to move by quarter-inches. He has ten thousand ways of disciplining His children, and so teaching them to make the very best of themselves. It is as certain as that He rules the heavens, that He knows just what sort of training is good for you. Your husband, your children, your home, are your working capital, a loan from Him—your talents, if you like that figure better. They are more than worth all the labor and the worries that fall into your lot. Husband, children, home, work and worry fill to-day full. Hence the folly, and the danger, and the sin of “the long reach.” The one coming guest whom you should never welcome is to-morrow’s possible troubles. The children are not to be educated today, nor is John ill or dead at the present moment, and the “lonesome” maid does not go until her month is up. The faith that removes mountains wears short-sighted glasses and brings them to bear upon the work in hand. This is not preaching, but practical philosophy. Try how it will work for a week—then a month—then a year. Keep your house as well as you can for John, for the babies, for yourself, and let the neighbors run theirs to suit themselves. Comparisons, according to Dogberry, are “odorous.” Comparison of this sort savors of discontent and trouble. Mind your own business and take your business in sections. “Magnify your office.” You are as important in your kingdom as was Queen Victoria in hers, and have not one worry where she had a thousand. Dust may be disease in embryo, and should be done away with by the use of all reasonable means. Overwork and worry kill more women in one year than the neglected deposit upon picture cords