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ALL A PART IN THE HOME WORK

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 25, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 21.

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ALL A PART IN THE HOME WORK.

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

BY MRS. L. D. AVERY-STUTTLE.
“And the eye can not say to the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” I Cor. 12:21.
There was a great hubbub in the back yard where the children were playing, and Cousin Fannie stepped to the window just in time to see two little faces flushed and excited, and to hear a sharp voice cry angrily:—
“Mother, Elizabeth Ann says she won’t bring in the night’s wood. She must, mama, mustn’t she? I did it last night, and now it’s her turn.”
“Look here, mama,” protested Elizabeth Ann, “I brought the water last night, and to-night too, and I’m not going to do all the chores for a lazy boy like Thomas Jefferson Brown—there now!”
“Tommy Brown, I’m ashamed of you! quarrelling with your sister already, before Cousin Fannie has been here a week; and you both promised that you would be good children all the while cousin stayed. I should not wonder if she went right back home. She doesn’t love you one bit, nor Libbie either, when you’re naughty, I know she doesn’t.”
“It’s too bad to tell them that,” said Cousin Fannie. “I’m sure I love the little ones very much; but I should be sorry for them to have no higher object in doing right than simply to please me.”
“I don’t care,” pouted Tommy, “‘Lizabeth Ann called me lazy, and I’m ever so much smarter than she is,—I do most all the chores, always.”
“I don’t know what to do with the children, Cousin Fannie, they always quarrel when it’s chore time; at other times they are quiet and loving toward each other. I’m so ashamed! I wish I had your knack. You always seem to know just how to manage children.”
“I will tell you, my dear, where I think the trouble lies: I have watched the children since I have been here, and I am sure neither are lazy, or dislike work of itself. But both have a strong sense of justice, and each imagines the other selfish and unjust—that is all, I think.”
“Will you tell me, cousin, how you manage at home? Your family is much larger than mine, and I have always noticed that everything moves off pleasantly.”
“I will tell you: Almost as soon as my children learned to walk, I gave them certain little tasks to perform every day. They soon learned that these duties were expected to be done by them alone, and they soon grew to take an honest pride in doing them well and promptly.”
“But you have so much patience with your children. I’m afraid I never could bother to teach baby to help me, it’s as much as I can do to see that the older children do not shirk their tasks.”
“I think if they were taught not to regard them as tasks, but rather as pleasant duties, they would be much more easily accomplished.”
“Well, I wish you would talk with Tommy and Libbie; I believe you could do them good.”
The next afternoon, at Cousin Fannie’s request, both children left their play to spend a half hour in her room.
“Did you ever think, my dears, how sad it would be if any member of your bodies should refuse to perform the work for which God made it?”
“That would be going on a strike, wouldn’t it?” asked sturdy little Tom.
“I am sure it would. Suppose, for instance, that when I called you up to my room, your feet had refused to bring you. Suppose they had said: ‘We are tired of carrying these little bodies around. We took them to school to-day and yesterday, and the day before, and we have given them a fine ride in the meadows after spring flowers, and here these ungrateful children are asking more favors still! It’s time the hands or the arms did some of our tasks for us; they must be very lazy, we think!’”
“O, how queer, cousin! just think of our hands doing what our feet do! Why, they couldn’t,” laughed Libbie.
“Well, then, suppose your eyes should declare they were tired of being used.”
“Why, we would be blind, cousin.”
“And suppose the little stomach should rebel, and declare that it had done so much work that it was unwilling to do any more.”
“We would starve to death, cousin.”
“I know what you mean, now, I’m sure,” declared Tommy. “I suppose we ought to be as willing to do chores to help mama, as our feet, and hands, and stomachs are to work for us.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Thomas Jefferson,” declared his sister pompously; “I’ll be the feet, and you may be the hands, and I guess we’ll get along without any more bother,”—as indeed they afterwards did, much to the delight of mama and Cousin Fannie, who declared it was always best to appeal to the better judgment of children.
“O, well,” says some one, “that’s all right where there is a small family of children; but suppose there are old people in the household,—what then? Surely it would not do to expect or ask them to help any in lifting the burdens of the family?”
Well, I have always found it to be true that old age is much happier to be useful than otherwise. Suppose a person has spent fifty, sixty, seventy years in useful labors for others, how must those busy hands ache with the awful weariness of enforced idleness! With what a shock must the consciousness come to him that he is no longer needed,—no longer a useful factor in society or in the family!
It is only our most depraved criminals that are given nothing to do,—in solitary confinement. Think what it means to have absolutely nothing required of one who has so long borne the heat and burden of the day, but to sit with folded hands, and weary hearts, “waiting for the boatman.”
Russell Sage, the multi-millionaire, tho past eighty years of age, still, unheeding the protest of his friends, continues to do many of his accustomed duties, the same as ever. Indeed, how often we notice that, just as a man accumulates enough of this world’s goods to “retire from business,” he retires from the stage of action almost simultaneously.
Then let us apportion to the weakest in the family—to childhood and to age—some little task, the doing of which devolves on them alone, and for which they alone will be responsible; and let no one say, however gray their heads, or furrowed their brows, or bent their forms,—“The days of my usefulness are ended.”