A Blessing in the Home
By Mrs. James Farley Cox
IN many a home, that woman of varied endowment, the maiden aunt, plays her quiet role of unrecorded and most valuable service, and her beneficiaries are scarcely aware of her sacrifice of time or personal enjoyment, or of the check she has put on her individual preferences or opinions in order to carry out the family rule, which she often neither approves nor sympathizes with. She is ever ready to take the helm when illness or absence forces the heads of the homes to yield it to other hands. If she has an independent income, this boy goes to college, and that girl receives the musical education for which she longs. Too often, even in grateful young hearts, no inquiry is made as to what might have come into her single, and, in some ways, lonely life had she used the money to gratify herself. She is dear and good and generous—they fully understand that; but where she would have traveled, what she would have taken delight in possessing—books, pictures, a home which was her very own, in which to express herself—they do not think or dream of these. “How could she be happier than she is?” Beside a sick-bed she keeps her close and tender watch, and when the mother, refreshed by sleep, made beneficial by her perfect trust in the care which supplements her own, returns to her post, she sees with unjealous eyes the joy with which the patient welcomes back the best-beloved. Never to be the very nearest and dearest, and yet gladly and cheerfully to fill all the offices in which many a brave and high-hearted single woman serves her family, calls forth the very highest type of character, and belongs to the noblest class of human endeavor. It would surprise many a household, and even astonish the minds of many a mother, to know how often a lovely and richly endowed sister or daughter shuts the door of her heart against the entreating affection which would woo her to come forth into a freer life and world of her own, and stands valiantly at a post where she feels she is needed. Unrecorded, except in those angelic tablets where we love to believe human endeavor is never without comprehending recognition, to-day, and every day, fair girls mature, but at the most receptive and perfect stage of life's experience see before them the way to their hearts' full satisfaction, and deliberately turn back to keep the cup of joy full for a mother or father, otherwise desolate. “I thought they cared for each other, but I am glad to say there is nothing in it.” How often have you heard some dependent mother say this? Can we not readily bring to mind homes which are absolutely permeated by the patience and enduring love of one strong, devoted heart? Have you not seen flaxen locks grow gray, and the straight carriage of a beautiful figure change to the stoop of an old, bent woman, without one faltering moment or backward look toward a past youth, while the burden of labor and administration and the fond bearing of burdens went on from decade to decade? And yet no man called this faultless woman wife, nor did any child name her mother. Not until the great summing up of human achievements shall be made, will the true estimate of such heroic lives be known. — Mrs. James Farley Cox.