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Sitting Alone With My Conscience
I sit alone in my school room,
And list to the falling rain,
And think of joys that died too soon,
Never to live again.
I think of the last great judgment,
And the sadness that there will be,
But sitting alone with my conscience
Is judgment enough for me.
I think of time in the distance,
And of the past that’s gone for aye,
And the present that’s becoming the past now,
And of the last great judgment day.
I strive to improve the present,
By the mistakes that I now see,
For sitting alone with my conscience
Is judgment enough for me.
I look through the years of sadness,
Back to life’s happy May,
And think of mistakes that I made,
Mistakes made day by day.
I think of duties not done,
part of her life. Why you take a steam engine
and a great deal depends upon the kind of coal
that you put in her as to the speed that she
will make. The steamboats that traverse the
Atlantic ocean are getting their coal from way
down in Southwest Virginia, passing by the
coal fields of the North, coming into the South
to get their coal because they have discovered
that there is a grade of coal in the bowels of
those mountains in Southwest Virginia that
will burn easier, consume easier, give forth
more steam, and this steam gives the power
that they use. That is what people eat for, not
for the fun of eating, they eat for power, that
they may have something to feed their bones
and muscles and flesh ancl every part and par
ticle of their being; and it is because of this
that it is so serious and important a matter as
that it should be given proper consideration
before she ever thinks of becoming the mana
ger of a kitchen.
A HAPPY FAMILY.
Make home attractive, but do not make
attractive simply by studying the culinary arc;
there is another thing that goes along to make
it possible for us to digest our food, and that
is a good temperament and proper kind of dis
position exemplified in the home life. There
is just as much importance in the temperament
and disposition shown in the home as in the
kind of food that’s eaten and the way it is pre
pared. Physiologists tell us that; they say
that if you would have a healthy family, you
must have a happy family; that happiness is a
most important part of health, and I believe
it is true. And especially ought we to be happy
and contented when at the table. There should
be the very best temperament exemplified
around the table with the very best cookery
that can possibly be done, in a house that is
as spick and span as soap and water can make
it. These things are all important adjuncts
to the health and contentment of a home.
Think of a man having to live in a home with
everything everlastingly turned topsy-turvy!
Think of a boy and a girl living in a home with
everything everlastingly turned upside down!
Think of the chagrin, the humiliation that
comes under these circumstances! Can you
expect them to digest anything. Let me say
to you women, those of you who are contem
plating entering upon this serious relationship,
make up your mind before you get married
that you are going to be a good housekeeper,
you do not have to be rich to be that; some of
the neatest homes have been the poorest; they
have been homes without a carpet on the
floor, but the floor is just as neat as it can pos
sibly be kept. They have been homes without
much furniture, but what is .ere is nicely
kept, and nicely adjusted. .ad make up your
mind to another thing. Make your mind up
Os things that ne'er could be,
And sitting alone with my conscience
Is judgment enough for me.
I look again to the future,
And wonder what it will be,
And strive to improve the present,
For the past no more I’ll see.
I m reminded again of the judgment,
And wonder how it will be;
But sitting alone with my conscience
Is judgment enough for me.
I wonder if I’ll stand in the judgment.
And hear the welcome words,
"Well done, my faithful servant,
Enter the joys of the Lord?”
Or will I be on His left hand.
Where all the wicked be?
But I’m alone with my conscience,
And it’s judgment enough for me.
A. L. O. STEPHENSON.
Susina, Ga.
§§§ SS3
that you are going to keep yourself neat. I
do not bame lots of men for staying down
town and running around, having to live with
the thing they have to live with, just a great
big old meal bag thrown down over a woman
and head not combed and nothing that is at all
attractive.
You women were much interested in some
things I said to the young men on these lines.
I want you to be interested in what I am ven
turing to say to you about your side of this
proposition. When the average young wo
man’s beau is calling to see her she will take
nearly all afternoon to adjust her toilet; she
will primp and puff and burn and powder and
rat and mice and the like of that, and when she
comes down she looks like some foreign impor
tation, and a good part of her is, and he hardly
knows just where to touch; let me touch a
spring that will drop off. That is before they
are married, and then just a few weeks after
wards just see what he has to come home to!
No more primping, no more arranging of the
toilet, except when company is going to come
of course she will go through the old art. You
think he does not pay any attention to that.
He does, for he is not a blind man. He has just
waked up to realize that there just isn’t any
use in saying anything about it, but it is a fact
that she has disappointed him. He thought
she was the essence of neatness and he is dis
appointed. Some of you, if you want a real
good recipe to again secure the old time atten
tions that you think are gone forever, just re
member what lam telling you. It goes a long
ways with a man.
THE FIRST CONSIDERATION.
Let me tell you another thing: make up your
mind that when God shall give you children
in your home that your children are going to
be looked after before all things. Why do you
give the worst room in the house to your boy?
The best room is the room for your boy, a
room neat and nice and well-kept. Do you
know why it is that so many boys will stay on
the streets? There is nothing attractive for
them at home. It is a tremendous problem,
this problem of holding a boy; a girl is held
by force of society; she must stay at home,
but a boy is at liberty to go where his inclina
tions lead him, and it is a tremendous problem
that lies upon the home and the mother, the
holding of the boy. I do not blame many of
the boys that live on the streets. If you will
go as I have gone in many of their homes and
see the rooms where they have to sleep and
write their letters, and read their books; the
bed not made up all day; old slop jars full of
water, the basin soiled, pictures all turned
topsy-turvy; all the old ragged furniture is
stuck in the boy’s room ; it is made a kind of
junk-shop for the reception of everything that
-The Golden Age for July ddo9.
nobody else in the house will have. "Oh, he
is a boy; he doesn’t care.” He does care, and
if you want to see the extent that he cares, you
turn and face about and begin to look out for
his interests in the home. Make him, not your
house, your first consideration—that boy in
your home for whose family training you are
responsible. You girls may not understand
what I mean; you think you ought to be the
first consideration, and you are for the most
part; but if you will fall in line with your
mother and help her make the house as attrac
tive as you can possibly make it for your bro
ther, in so doing you will hold your brother
and make it more pleasant for every one con
cerned. A girl was telling me about her bro
ther refusing to go with her to church. She
said that he just would not come with her, and
hence she could not get there. He would walk
right off from home and leave her there and
she thought he was terrible, and I thought
that was awful, but after I had become better
acquainted I could not blame that boy much.
That girl had just stayed around the house
and held her hands, or read, or played the pi
ano, while his room stayed unkept and she did
positively nothing to make his home attrac
tive and helpful to him. Fie had no respect
for her and when she wanted him to do a ser
vice he felt no inclination to do it.
Make your home attractive both in the ar
rangement and in the spirit manifested there.
A crowd of men were telling their reasons at
the lodge for their loyalty to that lodge. One
said its principles were so sacred, another that
the social life was so pleasant, etc. Finally an
old Jew said, “I want to tell you the truth. I
come to the lodge because it is too hot up at
the house,” and 1 wonder how many a man
lives upon the streets and goes to the lodge or
the club because it is too hot for him at the
house. The minute he goes in he is nagged at
about something. He has put his shoes under
the bed or has disarranged something; he is
nagged at, making his home a place of misery,
until he is disgusted. The place of the wife
is that of making that home and she can make
that home just what she wants it to be. If
she wants it to be a place of joy and attrac
tiveness, a heaven on earth, she can make it.
If she wants it to be a hell she can make it
that.
THE BUSINESS END.
Another thing you will find a great problem
in a business sense. The average wife has to
scheme to make both ends meet, and with
most of them, so far as I have been able to
judge, they do the wisest financiering
ever done on earth. I want to say a word here
again to you men. The average man con
cerns himself very precious little about the ex
ten to which he drives his wife to scheme and
cut expenses to come within his allowance, and
some of them are actually driven into slavery
by reason of it. I know men today, good men,
thoughtlessly, I believe, who are driving their
wives into abject misery, making them perpet
ually rake and scrape so that they can make
both ends meet, when his income does not
warrant that. But if it is necessary the wo
man has got to do it. It is a part of her work.
She has got to arrange so as to wisely expend
and wisely use the means that are given to her.
There will be a day, and I hope that day is not
far distant, when every public school will teach
cookery and housekeeping to every pupil that
goes into it, and further, the day will come
when every pupil will be taught a system of
housekeeping economics, and I do not know
anything that is more important both for health
and for happiness and for prosperity than a
proper system of housekeeping economics
taught the girls that are to be the women who
are to control our homes.
What does the average woman, when she
begins housekeeping, know about economics?
She does not know the price of a peck of meal;
she has to learn by serious blunders, blunder
after blunder, and oftentimes the husband is
so inconsiderate as to not spread the mantle
of charity over her blunders; he ought to con
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