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Mental House Cleaning

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 6, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 17.

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Mental House Cleaning

By Reina Melcher Marquis

It was an afternoon of early January when I called on the Wisest Woman I know, life having gone a bit awry with me, and my jaded spirit needing the refreshment which she always has on hand, like the tea and sandwiches of other women. She met me with a “smiling morning face,” although, as I have said, the day had reached its afternoon.
“Are you busy?” I asked, guiltily.
“No,—I’m just house cleaning.”
“Not busy—and yet you’re house cleaning?” I echoed in amazement. And then, as a practical afterthought, “But isn’t it rather early for spring cleaning?”
She had established me in the warm living-room, and I cast an unconsciously apprizing eye about it. It was a shining room,—shining with cleanliness and firelight and late, mellow sunshine,—but that was its wonted aspect. Nothing indicated a recent upheaval; peace and order presided there, and peace is not the ornamenting genius of house cleaning. My friend, noting my mystification, smiled at me from the other side of the hearth, and burrowed restfully into her deep armchair.
“I’ve been sitting here all afternoon,” she said, “and so I’ll have to confess that my house cleaning hasn’t been of the usual type.” And to the eager question of my face she continued: “It has been a mental, not a physical house cleaning. I’ve been sweeping and dusting and arranging my mind.”
“But how? and why?” I exclaimed. “Your mind is always freshly swept and dusted and filled with flowers. It was born that way, and it keeps so of itself.”
She shook her head. “Every one’s mind is born that way, perhaps, but no one’s mind keeps so without constant care. Our trite New Year resolutions, for example, are really brooms and dustpans for mental cobwebs; but as we produce them only once a year, they do not accomplish much. I clean up my mind at least once a fortnight. If I didn’t, I couldn’t live in it, and that, you see, I have to do. We all have to live in our minds; they’re our true homes. And pray what do you find there when you turn on the searchlight, and set to work with your broom? What an accumulation there is that must be ruthlessly cleared away!”
“Dust?” I inquired, curiously.
“And bogies,” she answered, gravely.
“But what is mental dust?” I persisted.
“Unkindness, intolerance, impatience, intemperance. All these accumulate like dust, and have to be swept away. For instance, I’m continually falling into the error of ungracious criticism. I see my fellows through lenses too strong for kindness, I’m afraid. I focus my attention on their faults, their disagreeable habits, their offensive manner or speech or dress. And while I’m looking at these weeds, I overlook the daisies of the simple folk, and the orchids of the fine. Now, I need their daisies and orchids in my mind to make it sweet, and I don’t need their weeds. So I have to remind and rebuke myself into a different point of view.”
“But every fastidious woman is critical,” I suggested somewhat defensively.
“Yes,” she assented with a humorous glint in her quiet eyes, “that is how I used to justify myself. And I really think that such small personal criticism is a peculiarly feminine feeling. But it isn’t an indication of a finely discriminating nature. The finely discriminating don’t waste their time on the ugly things,—no, not even to condemn them.”
“And the other dust-breeding qualities?” I suggested hastily, abandoning my attempt at defense.
“Well, I’m naturally intolerant, not only of people, as I have admitted, but of things and circumstances. I’m intolerant of my neighbors’ gilded chairs; and I’m often intolerant of my own life, of its limitations and responsibilities. Just another case of looking for the weeds, you see.”
“You unkind, intolerant?” I questioned in amazement. “Why, you couldn’t be and keep your radiant face!”
“But my expression is the result of constant house cleaning,” she triumphed. “I am critical and intolerant to a degree in my undisciplined state; and I’m impatient and intemperate, too. You’ve no idea how difficult it is for me to bear the petty worries of every day with grace. The doorbell that rings too often for sensitive nerves; the dinner that is somehow a failure; the frock that comes home from the dressmaker hopelessly spoiled; the unexpected guest who nonchalantly appears at the most inconvenient time; the neighbor child who incites mine to a devastating frolic on my flower beds,—all these and a host of other incidents make patience a hard-earned and harder-kept virtue for me. And intemperance! I mean intemperance of temper, of revolt, and sometimes of despair, which follows impatience like its shadow.”
“Yes,” I interrupted sympathetically, “I remember my impatience when baby broke his bottle of milk in a shower over the new dining-room rug—my intemperance of temper as you call it. And yet that darling baby—”
“Is the joy of your heart, of course,” she finished. “But he is also the menace of your nerves, and temper is somewhat a matter of nerves,” she continued. “There are a dozen such menaces in the course of a day, and each one leaves its dusty traces in the house of the mind. So frequent house cleaning is a necessity.”
“You spoke of bogies,” I suggested.
“Those that are biggest and commonest to all mankind,” answered the Wisest Woman, “are hate and fear. They are very big and very terrible indeed. When they come into the house of the mind, they have only to breathe to poison, although the malady may masquerade under another name. Hate—hate for some one who must always walk on the outskirts of my life, a figure that I must see every time I look out of the window, as it were—kept me ailing for several years. And fear—a foolish fear for the morrow’s welfare, for the bread in the pantry and the fire on the hearth—has beset me ever since as a small child I first saw a beggar. Many, many people feel this fear, vague but dreadful, and neither wealth nor place nor power can secure them from it. My mental broom and dustpan make no headway against these two bogies of mine. I have to buckle on my ‘sword,’ and fight them forth, so my house cleaning usually ends in battle,” and she laughed a brave laugh, the only kind that is truly joyous.
“It seems to me,” I said after I had laughed with her irresistibly, with a sudden lifting of the heart, “it seems to me that if unkindness and impatience and intemperance are the dust, and fear and hate are the bogies, love and faith must be the dustpan and broom, and courage the sword.”
“And so they are! But there’s one word in my little book of wisdom: Go to sleep every night with a smile, and a firm reliance on your heavenly Father’s love and care for you. This is just as necessary as opening a window. It lets the fresh air into the mind, and often a trouble or two will be blown away before morning. I’ve had my tragedy, like every one else. And through the months when it was blackest I smiled myself to sleep night after night so that I shouldn’t wear a bitter face. At first I found it hard to do, but after a while I fell into the smiling habit, and lo! before I realized it, tragedy had run away, and life was smiling back at me. Here,” she added thoughtfully, “endeth the lesson.”
But it didn’t end for me. It began as part of my daily life. And perhaps others may care to learn it for profit and for peace.—Reina Melcher Marquis.