The Simple Life by Priscilla Leonard

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jan 14, 1904

The Simple Life

By Priscilla Leonard

TIMES have changed, doubtless, and we can not expect to preserve the simplicity of our grandmothers. But the courage of simplicity is sadly needed among American women. Every detail of household life is becoming more and more complex. Many a husband and father is overworked year after year, till the strenuous life finishes him a decade earlier than necessary, because his household requires too much furniture, too many clothes, too many outings, too many entertainments, too many servants, too much keeping up with the rising standard of luxurious living. It requires a high courage for any woman to set a simple standard, and hold to it; but her family will rise up and call her blessed in the end, if she has the courage of her conviction that simplicity is the keynote of true living.

When we sit down and think about it, how few are the essentials of life, after all! Shelter, warmth, clothing, cleanliness, plain food, education, religion, family ties, friendship—there is little more to be added to complete the list. These are practically within any one's reach, without exhausting effort. Strenuousity begins when we add brownstone, steam heat, laundries, entrees, university courses, pews in expensive churches, and relatives and friends who spend largely and expect us to do the same. Caught in this luxurious whirl, we lose the realities for the appearances of life. Many a home which might have been happy if it had been contentedly simple, becomes a mere abode of contention, debt, and pretense, from which all possibility of happiness has faded forever. It requires bravery to wear one dress for three seasons when all one's neighbors have three dresses in

one season.

It requires a calm courage to do without new curtains and centerpieces when our friends regard them as necessaries of existence. It demands firm mental balance to read standard books instead of the last novels, and to let the flood of magazines and newspapers sweep by without wading in neck-deep in company with every one else. The woman who rushes from kitchen to club, from sewing-machine to charity-meeting, with haste and without rest, is called an "all-round" person in approving tones. "She neglects nothing," is the formula of praise from all her friends who toil after her, inspired by her strenuous example.

The woman who simplifies kitchen and sewing, who restricts clubs and charities to the point where she really gains strength and gives strength from and to them, and who aims for true social intercourse and not empty social dissipation, is regarded as "so eccentric," if she is a person of position and means, or "so queer," if she possesses neither. The average woman has not the courage to take this stand. It involves not being "like other people;" and we all know the horrors of that phrase to the average mind.—Priscilla Leonard.