IMMEDIATELY following the spring council of the Union committee held in Mussoorie, India, May 7-14, I started for South India, to spend a few weeks in that field, and hold a general meeting for the workers. This meeting was one of a series planned for each division of the Union by Prof. H. R. Salisbury before he left India to attend the Loma Linda council; and when he met with the accident in which he lost his life, he was hurrying back to India to hold these meetings before the hot season. The journey down and back covered a distance of three thousand miles, and was made during the hottest part of the year, when traveling in India is extremely trying and uncomfortable, and is avoided as far as possible. Five months had elapsed since I had been called away from the local responsibilities of that field to care for the general work of the Union, and it was a pleasure to greet the workers in that mission again, and to find the health and courage of all good.
WORKERS AND BELIEVERS ATTENDING THE SOUTH INDIA GENERAL MEETING
The Sabbath before the meeting began I spent with the church at Pondicherry, where Brother A. Devasayaham, our Tamil evangelist, and his wife, have been hard at work in a heathen and French Roman Catholic community. The Lord's blessing has continued with the work in that place, as shown in new converts to the message. After the usual Sabbath school in the morning, the ordinances of the Lord's house were celebrated, and in the afternoon I was privileged to baptize five persons, who were received into the church. There are still others at that place who are being prepared for baptism.
The meeting for the workers of the South India Mission was held May 26 to June 4, at Coimbatore, where Brother and Sister G. G. Lowry are in charge of the training school. For months all the workers had been looking forward to this occasion, and at the beginning of the Sabbath, when seventy-five workers, students, and believers joined in the opening service of the meeting, it was evident that all hearts were full of praise for answered prayer. From the first service, the Spirit of the Lord was present to bless and instruct.
This gathering of workers and believers was particularly interesting from the fact that four languages were represented by those in attendance,—English, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam. These are four of the six principal languages spoken in south India. All the preaching and instruction had to be interpreted at least once, and much of the time two interpreters were engaged simultaneously. There were present representatives from Madras, Pondicherry, Tinnevelli, Ceylon, Travancore, and the Telugu field. Although it was necessary for our European workers who were taking their vacation in the hills at this time, to break into their leave in order to attend, I was glad to see all present to share in the blessings of the meeting. On the last day of this spiritual feast I was happy to baptize fourteen new converts to the truth, seven of whom were people speaking the Malayalam language, from the native state of Travancore.
The morning following the close of the meeting, all in attendance witnessed a pretty wedding ceremony performed by Pastor Lowry for one of our faithful colporteurs and a girl from our training school, after which a company of seventy-five sat down to a Tamil wedding feast. By evening all had dispersed to various parts of the field, some returning to finish their furlough in the hills, some to evangelistic work in their stations, some to teach, and some to scatter the printed page. The bride and groom went to Travancore to start a station among the Malayalam people, and to take the oversight of the colporteur work just starting in that new field.
All in attendance at the meeting felt that it was a great blessing and help. Undoubtedly it was the best meeting ever held for our workers in India, and the meeting next year will be looked forward to with interest and pleasure. These annual gatherings afford a splendid opportunity for uniting the sympathies of workers and believers in the one great cause of truth, for developing and unifying plans of church organization and missionary endeavor, and for stimulating the zeal of the entire working force.
Workers attending the meeting from outside the mission were Brother A. W. Knight, the general canvassing agent, and Brother A. H. Williams, the treasurer of the Union Mission. The help and counsel rendered by both these brethren were very much appreciated.
The prospects for a large ingathering of souls in this mission were never more promising. Brethren V. E. Peugh and P. C. Poley are finding a large number of interested readers in Madras, some of whom have already taken their stand. Brother Asirvatham, our Tamil evangelist, is also meeting with encouraging success in his work. Very gratifying results have crowned the efforts of Brother and Sister Lowry in the school at Coimbatore, as evidenced in the conversion of some of the students, and the good grade of work done. This year there is a better attendance at the school than ever. Brother E. D. Thomas, our Tamil evangelist in charge of the work at Nazareth, has been greatly blessed in his ministry the past year.
Some advance stakes have been driven in recent months, consisting of one main station in the Travancore country, three outstations in the Tamil country, and one outstation in the Telugu field. Work is now going forward on two new quarterly journals, one for the Telugu and one for Malayalam people, and men speaking these languages are waiting to be trained for the colporteur work.14
These two papers, together with other literature being prepared, will give us access with the truth to twenty-six million people, for whom nothing has been done heretofore.
I am glad to report that all the workers and believers in south India are united in spirit and purpose, happy in service, and strong in faith for what God can do for those who put their trust fully in him. Remember the work and workers in this mission in your prayers.
A Visit to the Indians in the Mountain Altitudes
By F. A. Stahl
(Concluded)
F. A. STAHL
AFTER a lunch which the governor provided and pressed us to partake of, he and the mayor of the town took us through some of the ancient mines, and then through the old Spanish church. This church is adorned most elaborately. On the walls are large paintings representing the birth of Christ, his work of healing the sick, etc. The pictures are really beautiful, and I forgot myself for a moment and started to explain to the people what each picture was meant to represent. It came over me that while these people had seen the paintings many times, they do not really know what they represent, as they have no knowledge of the Bible.
The governor and the mayor and others then bade us adieu, and we continued our journey. We took another way homeward, holding meetings with the Indians at different places. Everywhere we found the people interested, and I know that God sent his angel before us to prepare hearts to receive the gospel. At one place where we stayed overnight, the owner of the hut, a very hard-faced man, said, “We knew that the missionary from Plateria was coming to visit Peachacane.” He did all he could to make us comfortable, and in the morning when I asked if our horses were safe,—I had heard that the country was infested with horse thieves,—he said, with a kind smile, “Yes, they are safe. I have been up most of the night watching them.” We held a meeting with the Indians who gathered, and all were interested, and none more so than this hard-faced man. He asked me many questions, and when we prayed, he bowed to the very ground in deep reverence. As we departed, he asked us to return and teach them all. He would take no money for our entertainment and with tears bade us good-by.
I felt ill, and had a high fever. If it had not been for this, I should have remained longer. But it was well that I got back to the mission, as my illness proved to be typhoid fever. For four weeks my faithful wife nursed me. To-day we are praising God for renewed life and health, and the privilege of continuing in this blessed work of bringing this saving truth to the people.
There are so many calls and openings that we do not know which one to answer first. Here at Plateria we have a live church, and around us hundreds who ought to have personal work done for them. These do not attend the Sabbath meetings, being satisfied to reap the benefits of the mission without obeying the truth. They should have Bible studies at their homes, and we believe, by earnest work and prayer and the blessing of God, they would accept the truth, which they do not now understand.
Then there are the near-by villages, where formerly the people were our enemies, but now they send for us to come and care for their sick.
There is also that broken stone to be taken back to the Indian chief. It has been three years [now four] since we first visited him, and I have not been able to return to answer his earnest plea, nor has any one else been able to go. It is a five days’ journey and one has to cross dangerous rivers.
At Taragguire, five thousand Indians want schools and instruction, according to a messenger who came to our mission and wanted to take us to the place at once. I was not able to go because of the work here, and he had to return alone, with a mere promise that we would visit them as soon as possible. This place is three days’ journey into the high, cold mountains, and when we go we shall have to take feed for the horses, as nothing grows up there.
I have promised to return in May to Sepita with a teacher. Sepita is high in the mountains on the border of Bolivia. When I was there, I crossed and recrossed the line between Peru and Bolivia to hold meetings and treat the sick.
Then there is the call from the Quichuan Indians, three days’ journey, their homes being situated on the plains, at a place called Caracut. Two Quichuan Indians came for weeks to our mission to learn the truth, but owing to the heavy rains we have not seen them for some time.
At Santa Rosa a Spanish gentleman and the justice of the peace have personally invited me three times to visit them and teach their Indians. This place is four days’ journey over the high mountains, and also has no food for horses.
At Juli, which is only one day and a half away, we have been invited many times to start a work among ten thousand Indians. A lawyer said he would give us land for the mission. But we have not yet been able even to visit this place. This lawyer has been trying to get the president and other men interested in this work.
There is the whole region of Peachacane, that is waiting to learn the truth. This is the place mentioned in the first part of this report, where the governor is favorable.
Lake Titalaka, where for more than a year the people have been calling for us to teach them, is still waiting. Lake Titalaka is a small inland lake not very far from this mission.
What shall we do about these calls, brethren and sisters? True, it is God’s work; but let us remember that God has turned it over to us to do. Truly he will help and sustain us, but at the same time we must make every effort to do our part. The questions for every Seventh-day Adventist to ask himself are, “Am I doing all I can to help along the great work?” “Do I really believe that I am telling the people that the time of the end is at hand?” “Am I holding on to sons and daughters who should be out in active service for the Lord?” “Am I hoarding gold and silver that should be used to honor my God?” We who are out in the field are working beyond our strength. “You should not do so,” I fancy I can hear some one say. But, brethren and sisters, we are forced along by the strong tide of need. The people all around are sin-sick as well as sick in body.
I had been ill with typhoid fever for four weeks. The third day I was up a man came to our door, begging and imploring that I go at once to Akora, a village four miles distant, to help a friend of his who was very ill. I told him I could hardly walk, I was so weak. “Oh, but do come!” he implored. I finally said I would go. Luciano got the horse ready, and I went. When I arrived at the house, I very nearly fell to the floor, I was so weak. But I was able to help the man and the people. You can see that I could not refuse this call. And so it is all the time. The words of that old Indian at Sepita keep ringing in my ears, “How can we learn the right way without a teacher?”
We are not unmindful of the faithful brethren and sisters, many of whom have given their all. There are many, we know, who are depriving themselves of conveniences to further the Master’s work, and we thank them. May the great God bless you, and truly God will remember the faithful in that great day of the Lord.
Mission Notes
The Gospels of Matthew and Mark have recently been translated into the Munchi, the vernacular of about 300,000 people in northern Nigeria. It is in the vicinity of this people that Brother D. C. Babcock is laboring.
While we are glad for the reports of large accessions in the populous countries, we are equally glad to hear of progress in the sparsely settled regions, where the difficulty of searching out the waiting souls is yet greater, possibly. Elder Isaac Baker, of the North Honduras Mission, Central America, reports that in spite of their meager financial resources, they have felt compelled to engage a faithful brother to take up work in the interior, where last summer six adults were baptized, and where now twelve others are reported keeping the Sabbath. Thus over the remote trails of Central America the truth is making its way. Speaking of work among the Spanish, Elder Baker adds, “We had a good convention here in La Ceiba, and at the close baptized seven adults.”
The Real Victory
By Elna Harwood Wharton
MRS. BOURNE sighed wistfully as she stood at the door of Garry's untidy room. The scene she had just passed through with her son had taxed her strength of will to the uttermost. As every mother and teacher knows, the act of disciplining another human being takes something out of the reserve store of force that is difficult to put back. A cataloguing glance around the room, with its tumbled, unmade bed, littered desk and window seat, bore evidence of the need for still further firmness with her son.
“Poor little fellow!” she thought, as she stripped the covers over the foot of the bed and opened the windows. “What rigid, inflexible lessons life has in store for him! And all I can do is to try to strengthen him, to make him learn that his tasks must not be put off without facing the consequences. I hate to have him lose even five minutes of the short afternoon sunshine to straighten his room, but it’s the best way.”
On this particular morning Garry had been unusually difficult. He came down to breakfast begging off from school. “I’ve got a headache and a pain in my side, and I don’t feel well,” he complained. His grandmother had openly sympathized. A threat of castor oil exposed the excuse as “five-minutes-after-nine sickness.” Garry then pleaded to be protected from big Bill Snedden, who had threatened to “beat him up.” Garry’s mother explained firmly why she would not interfere in matters between one boy and another. Finally the truth came out. He hadn’t done his home work! He had been reading a book. He would be kept in, and his relentless parent had packed him off to school with the unbelievable desire to have just that punishment administered.
It was Garry’s early morning duty to make his bed and put his belongings in order. From the time he had had a room to himself, Mrs. Bourne had insisted on this point.
“Bed making isn’t boy’s work,” the elder Mrs. Bourne said scornfully, when this requirement was announced. “You’ll make a sissy of him, Adelaide.”
“Boys at military schools have to make their beds,” retorted Garry’s mother. “There’s nothing effeminate about a military academy or a naval training ship.”
“Well, it’s menial labor. I never allowed my son to do anything menial.”
“You must remember it was easier, when Bruce was little, to get hired help, Mother Bourne,” Adelaide tried to conclude the argument pleasantly. “Nowadays we keep one kitchen maid where you were used to a large staff; and by the time Garry marries, it looks as if there would be no domestic servants to be had. Anyway, it’s good for him to be responsible for one definite duty.”
She persisted in what she felt was the right discipline for her own children. As each one was promoted to a separate room, the care of personal possessions had to be assumed. Comparatively rare now were mornings like these, when one of the rooms was left untouched because of the inflexibility of the school hour. Her course of action was always the same. She simply closed the door on the disorder as she was doing at present, and confronted the offender with the unfinished task at half past three.
All her married life Adelaide Bourne had gone about, picking up things for her husband. Notwithstanding her adoration for Bruce, their instant comprehension of each other’s motives and actions, their mutual interdependence and support in matters of the spirit, habits uncorrected in boyhood still clung to her husband in his maturity. She found her choice to lie between continual petty nagging and quietly straightening up what he had left about, as his mother had always done.
“He’s a grown man,” she decided. “I married him just as he was, for other qualities, and I’m not going to attempt to make him over. It’s too late to change him without spoiling the whole atmosphere of our home. He really doesn’t mean to make work, but his habit is stronger than his powers of observation.”
So she went on without comment, emptying ashes from his after-dinner coffee cups, rescuing neckties from beneath chair rockers, sorting and pigeon-holing letters and papers she found on the library table. She made up her mind that, whatever other faults her boys developed, no woman should have to put their dirty laundry away or straighten their bureaus and desks or scrub the wash basin after them. There was plenty of time between dressing and school for a child to put one room in order if some one else did the actual sweeping.
Grandmother Bourne was an old-fashioned housekeeper. Not to have every corner of one’s house immaculate before noon was somehow a disgrace. She had always prided herself on being able to exhibit any room in her house to any visitor at any time. Adelaide’s ways were past her comprehension.
She opened her door abruptly as Adelaide, coming from Garry’s room, was going through the second-floor hall toward the sewing-room.
“Won’t you let me make Garry’s bed this morning?” she urged, as Adelaide opened up her sewing-machine. “It makes the house look so untidy,” she added.
It was an old bone of contention between them. The question was asked and the same answer given every time the exigencies of the day forced one of the children to school without completing his or her task.
“I’ve shut the door, Mother Bourne. No one is coming here today; but even if there were, Garry must do his room himself.”
“I could do it so easily,” lingering with her hand on the closed door of Garry’s room. “He never makes it right.”
“O Mother Bourne,” cried Adelaide almost impatiently, “when will you understand? Garry needs the discipline of having to do it himself. He’s got to learn that putting things off won’t do him any good. He’s got to go through one trial after another till the lesson sinks in. It isn’t half so important to have the room tidy as it is to have him go through the motion of making it tidy. Don’t you, can’t you see?”
“No, I don’t. I think you’re terribly hard on the poor little fellow. And some day he’ll hate you for making his life just a round of chores. You can’t make a boy a gentleman by giving him servant’s work to do. You’re the most unsympathetic mother I ever saw. He’ll come home sick—you mark my word!”
Adelaide winced. She bent over her sewing-machine, tears of humiliation springing to her eyes. She wanted to snap back a stinging reply embodying her own ideas of the nobility of all willing helpfulness. Argument with Grandmother Bourne, however, was always16futile, and she went on sewing, the flood of words held heroically back.
The exertion of disciplining Garry was always exhausting to her. Why did it have to be complicated by the need of resisting the senseless interference of another will? It was a difficult problem. It simply meant a continual postponement of results with the boy, a succession of beginnings leading nowhere.
She was not afraid Garry would hate her. He was too fine for that. He might contest her ordinances; struggle to have his own way, openly defy her authority, as he had that time he played in the woods all day instead of going to school, but his love she would keep.
She was chiefly concerned on the present occasion as to what frame of mind Garry would be in when he got home. In spite of her determination that Garry must stay in after school and make up the lost work, she could not help feeling that an injustice beyond her control was somehow being inflicted on her boy. It lay in the necessity for any home work on top of the long school day. It was a question of the entire system of education as then conceived. There ought to be time enough in five hours to teach them, she was sure, without this additional burden that robbed the children of their pitifully few hours of out-of-doors activity. She was not at all certain that Garry wasn’t getting more real education out of browsing in history, natural history, and literature than the virtuous little boys who never failed to do the examples assigned. Still—the teacher must be upheld—
“I believe I’ll bring it up at the next parents’ and teachers’ meeting,” she reflected. “Of course it’s Garry’s misfortune to be so far along in the school where the lessons are piled on, but there’s something fundamentally wrong that ought to be changed. Poor little Garry; he’s sure to come home today late and tired, cross as two sticks; and after all, it’s not really his fault. It seems to me so many mothers’ problems are dilemmas like this—issues where discipline must be enforced, but where something bigger and deeper lies underneath, all twisted and unfair.”
She went on with the day’s miscellaneous tasks, Garry’s shortcomings and the various remedies for them uppermost in her mind. Garry was so much more complex than either Alice or Bud. In a way she believed he would have a much bigger future than either of the others, if she could but tender him the right mother-help.
Garry did not justify either his mother’s or his grandmother’s prophecies. With the strange perversity of childhood, he came home singing. His sweet little soprano voice had but lately found itself, or, rather, found its relation to his ears.
“Muddy! Muddy! Where are you?” he called through the house, abandoning the school bag in the middle of the hall. “What can I have to eat? I’m starving hungry.” As Mrs. Bourne appeared, smiling, on the staircase, Garry rushed up to her with a bear hug as devouring and conclusive as Bud’s. “O Muddy, my composition was the best in the class! And I got a hundred in arithmetic.”
“How about the home work?”
“Oh, I stayed in and did it. Didn’t take me fifteen minutes. We’ve got a lot of home work for tomorrow, mother, so you be sure to remind me to come in at half past five and begin.” As he talked, Garry was stuffing into his mouth the generous slices of bread and butter Mrs. Bourne had cut for him. There was a big red apple on the table, too. He put that in his pocket.
“You couldn’t spare another for Bill Snedden, could you, mother?” he asked eagerly. “Bill’s going to show me his cave—that is, if you’ll let me go?”
Garry’s mother smiled. “Then he didn’t beat you up?”
“Oh, no—I guess he forgot all that talk. I lent him my penknife at recess, and got him interested in my carpenter things, like you said. Bill’s a fine friend when you know him right.”
Mrs. Bourne produced a second apple, holding it back almost imperceptibly, however. Before the words were formed, Garry had anticipated them.
“I’m going right up now to do my room, Muddy.” He put up his face for a sudden impulsive kiss, and went bounding up the stairs.
“He won’t do it thoroughly,” thought his mother, glowing under the rare manifestation of affection, “but the will to do it is there now, and nothing else matters.” In an incredibly short time Garry was down again.
“Now, may I go, mother? Nothing really takes long when you want to get it done, does it, Muddy? And oh, Muddy,” turning back from the door and putting both arms around her neck, “I want to ask you something—as a favor. Please don’t think you have to give me a dollar or any kind of present for my birthday next week, the same as you did for Bud. I’ve got tools and lots of things, and I’d rather you didn’t spend the money till the house is all paid for!” A final hug and kiss, and Garry was tearing down the road waving his apples, two at once, at the waiting Bill Snedden.
His mother followed his lithe little form with glistening eyes. This, of course, was his inarticulate boy-way of saying, “I’m sorry about this morning.” But to think that the child had paid attention to their anxious, half-veiled discussions of ways and means! That was his father in him, thoughtful, self-denying. She hugged his precious, unselfish words to her heart; they meant to her a priceless jewel in the treasure chest of the future for her first-born.
“The real Garry’s as fine and sweet as his father,” was her thought. “From me he gets this silly handicap—his tendency to glue his eyes to his books and let lessons and more important things go. And the school’s to blame for much of this morning’s stupid misery. There shouldn’t be home work at all. The rest of him—the heedlessness and circuitousness and antipathy to the wash basin—that’s just plain boy!” Mrs. Bourne was hardly to be blamed if in her exultation of spirit over her boy she was tempted and fell.
She slipped into Garry’s room and remade the lumpy bed. She hung up the clothes that had been knocked to the closet floor in his haste to get his pajamas out of sight. She pulled the desk from the wall, and picked up the mass of papers that had fallen—or been thrown—behind it.
“Adelaide,” came a querulous voice at the door, “where are you? I just wanted to tell you I saw Garry going off down the road a few minutes ago with that Snedden boy.”
“Yes, I know, Mother Bourne; I said he could.” Adelaide hastily put behind her the odd stocking she had fished from under Garry’s bed. It was one thing to let Mother Bourne interfere with Garry’s disciplining, and quite another to improve upon his handiwork unobserved.
“Well, I certainly don’t see what you can be thinking of,” snapped the older woman as she slammed her own door.—Elna Harwood Wharton, in the Delineator for September.
Conducted by Mrs. I. H. Evans, Takoma Park, Washington D. C
By Mrs. I. H. Evans; Miss Lora E. Clement
Assisted by Miss Lora E. Clement
Through the columns of this department, hints will be given on all matters pertaining to the home life. Short articles and letters are solicited from home makers, telling of their everyday experiences,—their joys and sorrows, their failures and successes.
Just a Smile
By I. H. Evans
I. H. EVANS
Just a smile; but what a lifting
To a heart that's cold and dead!
It's so like a sunbeam drifting
Through a sky all gray and lead.
Just a smile! But O, what magic
To the soul in trial tragic,
To lure it back to hope again!
Just a smile! It costs the giver
Neither gold nor toil nor pain;
But it gladdens, like a river,
Desert wastes to flowers and grain.
Just a smile! O, glimpse of heaven!
Live with me, my soul to leaven,
And teach me man has heart that's kind.
Just a smile! Magician's story
Ne'er such wonders wrought and told;
For a smile turns earth to glory,
Changes dross to purest gold.
Just a smile, for friend and stranger,
Makes one think of Bethlehem's manger,
The Christ of hope and help and love.
Having What Others Have
We all know that the desire to have what others have causes more ruin than almost any other social instinct. We must go where others go, we must do what others do, we must dress like others, we must eat like others, we must travel like others. How often we do things quite indifferent to our own tastes and wishes simply because others do them!
This tyranny of the notion of others is especially marked in a democratic society, where every one is striving to get up in the world, and to have his wife get up in the world, and to have her show it by dressing and entertaining as others do, or a little better.
Most of all are we anxious not to have our children in any way outdone by the children of others. If Maude next door takes violin lessons at five dollars a lesson, our Gladys must pay five, or six. If Maude’s brother, Jim, has a motor cycle, our Tom also must have one. The process too often lands Gladys and Tom in the poorhouse, where, to be sure, they will find a good many others—only they are not the others we wish to imitate. Therefore, prudent and thrifty parents never tire of counseling their children, “Do not consider what others have. Govern your outlay by your income, and have only those things that you can decently afford. By far the most precious and least-imitable thing that others—a few others—have, is complete independence.” Parents of that type often deny their children what they could easily afford simply to root out the everlasting disposition to copy the tastes and the expenditure of others.
The principle may be carried too far and cause huge unhappiness, that unhappiness of a child which is huge in its desolation, however trivial it may appear to those who are older and wiser. Do not let your child be servilely imitative17of others, but do not let him—and still more her—be odd, be different, be out of touch with his little world in those minor things that count more for success in life than many persons realize. When you buy a new toy or a new implement of sport, buy one that will be right, not one that perhaps costs a few cents less and that will be mocked at with the bitter mockery that children practice and feel. You were young once yourself. Go right back there and try to save your children some of the unnecessary misery that you felt. There will be enough necessary misery that you cannot save them.
As the main rule of life, having what others have is pitiful. As a correction for individual oddities and little tactless awkwardnesses, it is a most useful guide and not to be neglected.—Selected.
Early Lessons
By Mrs. Bernice Henson
MRS. BERNICE HENSON
From her babyhood I have tried to teach my little girl lessons of order and system, and I feel that so far I have been quite successful. I began by having a regular time for everything in regard to her care, such as feeding, nap, bath, and bedtime. She soon learned to expect and accept each thing at its appointed time, which kept her very good natured. As soon as she was old enough to have playthings, instead of allowing them to be strewn all over the house, I kept them together for her. When she began to walk, I taught her to pick up her playthings, and put them away neatly at nap-time, bedtime, or before leaving the room to play outdoors. I also taught her to put away one set of playthings when through with them, before getting out another set.
Now at three years of age she puts away all her playthings, and takes good care of all her things. Yet she is full of life, energy, fun, and frolic.
In undressing her when she was a baby, I always straightened out her clothes, and hung them up or laid them neatly on a chair. When she was a year and a half old, I had with me a four-year-old niece, and I taught her to hang her clothes up neatly, and put her shoes in a certain place. Ethel begged to do the same, so I fixed some hooks low enough for her, and she has kept up the habit ever since. She also has a low hook for her coat and hat, and she gets these garments when she wishes to go outside, and hangs them up when she comes in.
A little over a week ago, when she got up from her nap, she put on all her clothes, and had them on right, before any one knew she was up. She has been dressing herself ever since.
Mothers Before System
Too much system hurts little babies. Dr. Joseph E. Winters of Cornell University says so, and he is a high authority on children’s complaints. It will comfort many persons to hear this man speak out. It is not only the bodies of babies which are starved. Too often another precious thing is quite destroyed. Babies and mothers were invented a long time before doctors and nurses. Centuries before modern science took to weighing infants before and after meals, there grew up, from the dependence of the child on the mother, a marvelous bond of sympathy. It is the helpless babe’s only source of comfort, and it survives as the one consolation of many a woman in her old age. But too much “system” in raising babies destroys this fine product.
If a baby is always and forever to be left alone to “cry it out,” according to the directions of the trained nurse, the seed of this sympathy is never sown. Wrapping a child’s finger in antiseptic gauze is a safe and sane process, but it is the kiss that really cures. It is mother’s understanding of “how it hurts” that makes wee Billy a brave boy. And just that way, even as little children, grown men sometimes want their mothers.
There is no substitute for this normal sympathy between mother and child, and it is sure to be stunted, or may never grow at all, if orphan asylum methods—too much system—are permitted to interfere with their intimate personal relations.—Selected.
Be Sparing of Don'ts
By Anna L. Patterson
ANNA L. PATTERSON
“Mamma, I wish naughty was good, and good was naughty,” said Lorcina one day.
“Why do you wish such a thing as that, daughter?”
“Then I could be good all the time,” was the unexpected reply.
It dawned upon that mother that she had formed a habit of chiding and reproving her little girl for the many naughty things she did, without helping and instructing her to do the things she should, and that if she had spent more time in finding useful employment for her child, she would not have needed to censure her so often for her misdeeds.
Often Lorcina heard her mother say, “Don’t do that,” “You mustn’t do this, it is naughty;” but rarely did she tell her the things she could do. It is as natural for us to do “naughty” things as for the sparks to fly upward; so naturally the uninstructed child found herself invariably inclined to do the things that mother called by that term.
Many mothers make the mistake of constantly chiding and scolding the children for their misdeeds, when the same time spent in training them in wholesome and useful employment would lessen the inclination to evil, and the heart of mother and child would be bound together with a purpose to do that which is right.
A Smile
It was only a sunny smile,
And little it cost in the giving,
But it banished the night like morning light,
And made the day worth living.
Through life's warp a woof it wove,
In shining colors of hope and love;
And the angels smiled as they watched above,
Yet little it cost in the giving.
—The Open Air Smile.
The Care of Irons
FIRST of all, the irons must be immaculately clean and suited to the article to be ironed. Irons come now in all sizes, for all purposes. Heat the irons slowly, but have them very hot before starting, even if they must be cooled later. Try them on a soft, clean cloth.
The ironing sheet also must be clean. For fine lingerie, cover the ordinary ironing sheet with thin material; for embroidery and lace, use a Turkish towel, pinned tightly around the board. To stiffen articles slightly without starch, rub them on the wrong side with warm water and borax.
To clean the irons, if starch sticks, rub them over fine emery paper, then with a little paraffin wrapped in muslin. If an iron becomes rusty, scrub it with hot water and soap, then rub it very lightly with lard. Wipe it carefully with absorbent cotton to remove all traces of the grease.
Never allow irons to get red hot, as it takes the temper out. Do not put a hot iron in water to cool it; stand it on one side for a few minutes.
It is unwise to put irons directly over the gas flame, as it spoils the iron. In the absence of a special device for holding them, use an asbestos mat.
When possible, colored goods should be ironed on the wrong side, then pressed on the right. This brings out the coloring. No wool underwear ought to be ironed, as ironing causes it to shrink.—New York Sun.
Singeing Does Not Prevent Hair Loss
THERE seems to be no end to things that people do to make the hair thick and lustrous. We used to be told that “singeing” was a sovereign remedy to prevent falling hair, and very plausible reasons were given therefor. Now we are told that “singeing the hair ends, in order to prevent the fluid in the hair from escaping like sap from a tree, is based on an entire misconception of the hair’s structure and nutrition. The hair does not contain any more sap than a whip; it is not nourished by any fluid in it, but by the blood plasma that reaches only the hair root. The hair above the skin surface is a spine of horn, which is even oiled from without, and singeing its tips has no effect whatever on either its nourishment or its growth. It is certain that singeing the hair is of no value in preventing its fall; in fact, the only value the procedure has is to the zealous hairdresser, who gets his little fee for doing it—unless it is worth a quarter to the seeker after hair to think he is doing something, even if he is not.”
Love Without Limit
“SINCE God is love and God is illimitable, the true limit of love is to love without limit.”
