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6
Worth Woman's While
May every soul that touches mine—
Be it the slightest contact—get therefrom some good,
Some little grace, one kindly thought,
One inspiration yet unfelt, one bit of courage
For the darkening day, one gleam of faith
To brave the thickening ills of life,
One glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering
mists,
To make this life worth while,
And heaven a surer heritage. —Anon.
Taking Our Meals Out-of-Doors.
Have you brought out your porch table yet, and
begun to lay your breakfast on the back verandah
and your tea on the grass under the trees? It is
chief of all the luxuries of summer, the season of
all the year when Nature has made it so that man,
with the rest of the animal world, can live out of
doors, and has invited us with such wealth of beauty
we are all but driven from our confining, soul-cramp
ing walls into the open, there to expand and take
in with the pure, sweet air, the exhiliration, the in
spiration which nothng but actual contact wth the
physical world can give—the grassy sward or brown
earth under the feet, the leafy canopy and blue sky
overhead and green growing things where we can
feel their breath and reach out and touch them.
They whose habit it is to rise late and take the
morning meal in a room that all night has been
closed and but a short time opened, can have but
faint conception of the sweetness of a June morning
at six o’clock with the sun already strong and be
ginning to dry the earth of the fragrant dew, shin
ing brightly upon a cheerful table laid in the de
licious freshness of the porch, or better still, in the
yard. Things have a different sort of look from' the
hour and the environment, and the most indifferent
appetite rouses to the delights of brown toast and
butter and fresh fruit and cream and the tantalizing
odor of coffee—coffee made as only it ought to be
drunk, free of caffein, delicate and fine and not
hurtful. Okie approaches such a table with a
pleased sense of something that makes the day good,
and leaves it refreshed and not burdened, as some
times is the case with breakfast taken with indif
ference in an atmosphere containing little of the
ozone of pleasurable excitement. And this is just
what unconsciously and without effort or will of
our own we get from the out of doors—a physical
and mental pleasure, which more than anything else
rights and aids digestion, and makes of a perfunc
tory habit a pleasure and a good. The birds,
the soft breeze in the branches, the stir of lately
awakened life everywhere, the. drew-wet spray of
bloom in the center of the table, not any one of these
is it, but a subtle something we cannot just name
acts upon vs and like a powerful tonic surely builds
up in the places where we were run down. Not all
at once certainly, but when it has been tried a few
weeks where else did the improvement come from?
“Oh,” exclaimed a woman of our acquaintance
the other day, “I am so much better! I have been
spending a month with some friends in the suburbs
where we almost lived out of doors. We have been
eating out of doors!” She was enthusiastic, and
sure that her health was improved, and we could
but smile in sympathy, for we knew what it was to
“eat out of doors.”
A charming woman who is very fond of having
her friends with her, shows the rarest good sense
and taste in the simple hospitality which in summer
she extends to all in turn. Having but a tiny cot
tage with a bit of old-fashioned garden in front,
she is necessarily restricted, but what the house
lacks the garden makes up. Here, surrounded by
masses of bright annuals, with views of rolling fields
and purpling woods beyond, her little table is dain
tily spread, and if you have the good fortune to be
her guest, and lingering over her delicious tea watch
the glorious sunset and the soft settling of the moun-
The Golden Age for June 21, 1906.
By FLORENCE TUCKER
tain twilight, and afterwards the recollection re
mains with you as with us, —when you come to recall
what few and simple things composed that modest
little repast, what utter absence of pretense
there wes, yet what true elegance of manner, what
sincere hospitality, you marvel that there is not
more of this sort of entertaining—that you do not
do more of it yourself. The quiet little meal she
serves, inside would be only pleasant, outside it is
an experience to remember.
A family we know—father, mother and eight chil
dren—use the back porch for a summer dining room
and eats here the season through, and such happy,
healthy children these are, sound of body and tem
per. Another family where there are only grown
ups, is fond of leaving the porch for the lawn for
the early evening meal. As this family is small, a
little square table., as light and convenient to handle,
is made to answer, and this is carried out to the most
attractive spot—sometimes near a spicy, spreading
fig bush, often under a great beautiful sycamore, or
when there is danger of a shower, quite close up to
the porch, that it may be but a moment to get safely
to cover. This meal is like a little outing. The ta
ble if small and crowded is laid with care, the best
silver and china, and flowers—in the absence of the
latter, clover heads and flowering grass are even
used—and the members of the household gather to
it with evening paper in hand, with book, and with
pleasure, reading the news of the day and chatting
as they linger until the shadows begin to fall. Here,
too. the meal is as befits the season—cold breads,
cold vegetables, cold tea, sandwiches, and fruit or
some light chilled dessert. Who would choose hot
food on warm summer evenings?
And what housewife does not prefer to prepare
the day’s dishes as far as possible in the early hours
before the heat becomes so burdensome? Summer
offers such a plentitude of good things. What we
shall have for dinner is not the vexing question it is
at other seasons. Rather, are we in danger of hav
ing too much, too great a variety—and the most of
it hot! Hot breads, hot puddings and pies, as
well as the whole scale of vegetables and meats.
And how much simpler and how much better once
you accustom yourself to it, to have vegetables
cooked in the early part of the day and set away;
to have cold joint or fowl, and fruits cool and juicy
as nature provides them ready for our use, not
cooked unnecessarily into forms less attractive and
far less wholesome. Greater quantities of warm food
will be taken, and so the stomach overloaded before
we are aware, and when this is accompanied by ice
cold drinks, as is apt to be the case, the unwisdom
and the harmfulness are too apparent.
For every reason the out-of-doors is preferable.
It somehow doesn’t occur to you to carry a steaming
meal onto the lawn. We move unconsciously by
suggestion, and the two do not in any way connect
themselves. If you have not tried it, make the ex
periment of inviting the family to a table with green
grass for a carpet, and for a ceiling green leaves,
with little patches of blue visible through the sky
lights, and witness their pleasure; then consider the
benefit to health, the pure joy to all—and wonder
with us how in the world people can go on cooping
themselves up inside walls when they might be out
enjoying what was meant them to enjoy so. Else
why do we have summer?
Emerson says in effect, “The virtue you would
like to have, assume it as already yours, appropriate
it, enter into the part and live the character just as
the great actor is absorbed in the character of the
part he plays.” No matter how great your weak
ness, or how much you may regret it. assume stea
dily and persistently its opposite until you acquire
the habit of holding that thought, or of living the
thing, not in its weakness, but in its wholeness, in
its entirety. Hold the ideal of an efficient faculty
dr quality, not of a maned or deficient one, The
way to reach, or to attain to anything is to bend
oneself toward it with all one’s might, and we ap
proximate it just in proportion to the intensity and
the persistency of our effort to attain it.
If you are inclined to be very excitable and ner
vous, if you “fly all to pieces” over the least an
noyance, do not waste your time regretting this
weakness and telling everybody that you cannot
help it. Just assume the calm, deliberate, quiet,
balanced composure, which characterizes our ideal
person in that respect. Persuade yourself that yon
are not nervous or excitable; that you can control
yourself; that you are well balanced; that you do
not fly off on a tangent at every little annoyance.
You will be amazed to see how the perpetual hold
ing of this serene, calm, quiet attitude will help you
to become like your thought.—Success.
He Would Not Compromise.
In 1845, when traveling as a circuit preacher, the
Rev. W. H. Milburn was sent from St. Louis to
Wheeling, West Virginia, on the boat were several
congressmen going to Washington, some of whom
shocked the young minister by their reckless speech
and habits.
One of the days of the long river journey was
Sunday, and Mr. Milburn was asked to preach. The
offending congressmen were present to hear him,
and at the close of an appropriate discourse he ad
dressed them directly, and solemnly denounced thir
action in the plainest language. He told them that
he had supposed that the representatives of the na
tion at its capital were representatives of its char
acter as well as of its intellect, but “If I am to
judge the nation by you,” said he, “I can come
to no other conclusion than that it is composed of
profane swearers, card-players and drunkards.”
The same day Mr. Milburn was waited upon in
his state room by a gentleman who presented a
purse—about seventy-five dollars—from the con
gressmen, in token of their “sense of his courage
and faithfulness,” and desired to know if he would
allow them to present his name at the opening elec
tion of chaplain to Congress.
Blind Chaplain Milburn obtained this honorable
post through his fearlessness in his sacred profes
sion and his loyalty to truth and duty.—Youth’s
Companion.
We were told today a touching incident of the
picnic given in this city a short time ago to the
poor children, the little ones who have no fathers
and mothers, or none who can give them much of the
pleasures, or even the comforts, that it seems to
some of us older ones childhood wherever found
ought to be entitled to. It was a lovely picnic.
About three hundred little people were served by
many willing hands, and long tables were laid beau
tifully. At each place were two nice meat sand
wiches and two little cakes and a glass of lemonade
and a plate of most beautiful ice cream, and a little
bag of candy (the very best candy too, fresh and
wholesome), and by the side of it all a folded paper
bag. The bag was for the child to put anything into
it that he did not wish to eat just then.
It was about one of those bags the lady was tell
ing us. She was one who saw that the children
were given everything and made happy—a sweet
lady with beautiful white hair and a lovely, kind
face. One little girl about three or four years old
she noticed holding on to her bag of lunch with
earnest and unyielding grip, and spoke to her kindly.
“Why don’t you eat your dinner?” she asked.
“Why,” cried the child, in surprised and indig
nant protest, “I’ve got a baby at home!”
We laughed when she told us—but we would rath
er have cried. Her “baby at home!” Was ever
anything more touching? Was ever unselfishness
more simply, more beautifully or more faithfully
portrayed? Dear little thing!