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6 Worth Woman’s While By all means use some time to be alone, Salute thyself, see what thy soul doth wear; Dare to look in thy chest, for ’tis thine own, And tumble up and down what thou findest there. —Herbert. Novel Sentence of a Western Judge. ANY good things have come out of the West, but none better than the treat ment of a certain wise and humane judge for drunkenness, the habit with which women have had to contend as far back as the time of Mr. and Mrs. Noah, and which certain good men have tried by different ways and means to over come in their weaker brethren. You I can hardly pick up a paper without seeing the ad vertisement of some whiskey cure: and if all the tales should be writ of the wives who in secret and misgiving have sent off to these philanthropic doc tors small sums guaranteed to relieve husbands of thirst and homes of the awful shadow which hangs over them—if the statistics could be compiled of the cups of coffee men have drunk and the kinds of powders injected therein by shaking fingers—Ah, if the story of women's heartbreak could be put into mere words I Is there anything they have not had recourse to from prayer to what one calls “drastic measures” ■—which with her means taking her husband’s clothes and locking them up so that he cannot go out? First, this woman would hide her man’s hat, but finding he would take anything that happened to be on the rack, his little son’s battered straw, or even the baby girl’s bonnet, and thus head-geared board the five o’clock car in the morning for the city, she decided upon the whole of his raiment, se cured when in the heaviness of sleep. For days and weeks she has kept him shut in so—only to have him finally get away and straight into deeper drunk enness. To see a man sitting around in his own house with his hat on his head and holding on to his umbrella fearful to let go either, lest it be promptly whisked away, is a ludicrous picture looked at from one point of view. Or to hear him storming, then en treating, with promises to be good if only he may be allowed his trousers. But there is the other! What must be the mental state of the wife? Powders do no good; humiliation in the safe se clusion of the four walls of home is effective only until the humiliated is let free; nothing that ever the mind of woman has been able to suggest has proven a sure remedy. And so with man’s devices of the law. its fines and even imprisonments. Judge Herr out in Kansas recognized it all. This man whose desire is to help his fellow beings set to work to think out a plan by which he as an officer could deal with the problem the law 7 has never been able to handle. And this is what he hit upon—this is the punishment he determined on for drunkenness: A sentence of two weeks in bed, with officers on guard to see that it is complied with. A simple cure, but how successful may be judged from his own words: “ After waiting to see the effect of the sentence I am glad to say that it has had a most salutary ef fect, as the man punished has been the most in dustrious man in town since the expiration of his term of enforced bedfastness, ten days ago. U I have had considerable trouble with this man in my several years of experience. I have fined him a total of $2,500 for being drunk and resisting offi cers, and have sent him to the county jail and to the city prison, and have tried other means to get him to consider his foolish ways. His latest punish ment has been most effective, not only upon him, but upon others who are not such persistent trans gresssors. They have been very careful lest they, too, should get a dose of confinement in bed.” The Golden Age for August 23, 1906. By FLORENCE TUCKER And is it any wonder? Fancy a strong, active man having to lie fourteen days, three hundred and thirty-six hours, never for a moment from under the unwinking gaze of a police officer—face to face with the realization of his own ignominy. It is not like ly one would ever willingly incur such sentence a second time. And such a simple, harmless punish ment! If only the ? were more Judge Herrs. If only women everywhere could see their misguided spouses thus straight again! It is a remedy which appeals to all. Setting Our Minds to It. Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice has given us a good deal of homely philosophy which taken with a smile is always returned to with another, but nothing she ever said has a sounder ring than this: “If you want to be cheerful, jes’ set yer mind on it and do it. Can’t none of us help what traits we start out in life with, but we kin help what we end up with.” Cheerfulness is the key-note to this wholesome woman’s message, and here she gives the rule by which w T e all may acquire it. It need not be a mat ter of temperament; melancholia which w 7 e like to lay to heredity, environment that, like circumstan ces, gives color to moral and spiritual temper, may be what they will and what they must —she admits we cannot help what traits we start out in life with —but, here is the hope and the encouragement, “we kin help what we end up with.” Just how far inherency may be overcome, how far, because of it, we are helpless and so, perhaps, not amenable, it w’ere safer not to argue. There are times when even a little learning makes us mad, and nowhere is it more true than in questions of moral responsibility. When w T e begin to argue then are we lost. What we want is to set about doing, never minding the influence upon us of people or things— if we want to be cheerful, just set our mind on it and do it. There is all of sound common sense in this, and the truest wisdom. Yes, and hope. Many of ns have so given way under the pressure of what we take to be untoward fortune that we fancy both it and our spirit irremediably broken—we have so much to make us sad, we have been sad so long, how could we ever be glad again? We do not allow that even hope is left us. “Yes,” we say, “I can see how it could be so for other people but I ” We must all insist upon being a little different from others, our lot is peculiar in this or that. It does not do to enter into the question too criti cally. It is only to lose in the end. Rather, take Mrs. Hegan’s advice—make up your mind to be cheerful and set about it. Mental and moral (per haps the trait were both) habits, like other things, are only acquired through practice, and first, we must begin. The woman who set herself the task of laughing three times a day must have presented a sorry spectacle in the beginning, but how else was she to learn, how acquire the habit but by cultivat ing it, and, the more surely, by doing it systematical ly? Recognizing her growing in the opposite direc tion she regarded a turn-about as duty—the culti vation of cheerfulness is obviously one of the chief duties of existence. And that reminds us of what Paxton Hood says, that it is a beautiful arrange ment of our nature that “that which is performed as a duty may, by frequent repetitions, become a habit, and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around one’s neck like a wreath of flowers.” Perhaps the wreath is made of all the virtues represented by as many different flowers, and surely none can be fairer than cheerfulness— we do not know but maybe it is the rose, the very queen of the garden. The Common-Sense Cure. The trouble with most of us is we do not take time to mend up; our bodies become through over tax run down, and soon, if we persist in disregard- ing needed repairs, are laid off as out of use. Then only do we begin to take notice, and rush off post haste to an allopath to be doctored up with drugs and treatment that bring us to a realizing sense of our miserableness. There is some explanation in the fact that nobody wants to be half sick and thought to coddle himself unnecessarily, but reason should tell us it were better to bear the misjudging and even unkindness or ridicule of the thoughtless, than to persevere in what can have but one end, certain breakdown. For the woman who indulges herself needlessly and at the expense of those whose comfort depends upon her, there can be but one word; but she who with taking care conserves her strength will the least often give out, and so in the long run hers is seen to have been the wiser course. Harper’s Bazaar speaks of the “common-sense cure,” which may appear to some over-zealous peo ple who never are overtaken of weakness or malady a little lackadaisical, but to us looks eminently sen sible—the most sensible thing, indeed, that has at tracted our attention lately. Every one must have observed the increased and increasing number of sanitariums and sanatoriums of every kind, and the overflow of them all with patients. It is the most expensive means to which we can resort to get well when sick. How much better, then, by taking care and following the course here outlined, not to bring this trouble upon ourselves and our friends, to be saved suffering, the outlay of money, and the separ ation from home and loved ones. The cure which appears to us so reasonable is de scribed as follows: Suppose byway of summary, that the wise wo man at home has decided to “overcome by yield ing”—yielding physically and mentally—to the common-sense cure. She has made out a daily schedule of treatments, which is placarded on the wall. Probably that perverted proverb “Many are called, but few get up,” encourages her to inactivity. If she has progressed to the enterprising stage, how ever, she arises leisurely, arrays herself in comfort able garments in no way impeding the circulation, drinks two glasses of water, and starts for a stroll, walking slowly and breathing deeply. She lingers in the sunshine, for she has learned its therapeutic power. After breakfast comes the relaxation on her cot in the open air, followed by either the tub bath, the massage, or the salt rub, two of each filling the schedule. Before the dinner at one or two o’clock she repeats the drinking of water and the walk—as, indeed, she does before supper time, which may be observed by the simple cup of malted milk—while the siesta of the afternoon, which, at the sanitarium is interrupted by vibratory massage given by ma chinery, may have as its substitute at home a few physical exercises. If the patient has not reached the enterprising stage, the walks and the special af ternoon treatment are dispensed with. Then at nine o’clock she retires to rest undisturbed by nightmares induced by indigestible sod, and repeating as her prayer, “God bless the man who first invented sleep.” When things go wrong with you in the home, when you teel ready to sit down and “have a good cry,” because, perhaps, the temperature of the oven has been too great, and your loaves, that should have come out brown and crisp and toothsome, look like burnt cinders, resist the temptation to give way to your feelings. The enemy has come in on you like a flood, it is true: but are you, in the strength of your womanhood, and the consciousness of your power over circumstances, going to lose your self control, to allow an accident that will have complete ly passed from your mind tomorrow to make you miserable and unhappy today, even for an hour? It is by calmly meeting these small vexations that we are strengthened to overcome in the more serious battles of life.—Selected.