SIMPLICITY IN THE HOME.
By Edward Bok
[Edward Bok, in the July Ladies’ Home Journal.] OUR whole future very often depends on how we start. It is not, of course, expected that a young married couple will start exactly right. That would not be possible. Experience teaches us as nothing else can. But there are one or two points easy of comprehension that are possible to take into married life at the very beginning; and one of them is the great gospel of simplicity. The simpler we keep our lives the happier we are. If she but keep this one idea in mind, two-thirds of her future troubles will be avoided. It fits into everything she puts into her life, and whatever she puts into her home—that one little word, simple. Small as that word is, it is one of the most difficult to understand and grasp. But to learn its fullest meaning is to bring to one’s self the greatest happiness possible. It solves more problems than any other single element in our living of to-day, when it is so easy to drift into complications. We become nervous, petulant, ill; we make burdens of our homes instead of rest-places of delight; we make of ourselves unattractive wives and irritable husbands simply by permitting too many things to come into our lives under the impression that they are necessary to our living and happiness. We place a value on externals far beyond their value, until they assume a fancied necessary place in our lives. But, as a fact, we would be infinitely better off without them. And by our failure to perceive that they are unnecessary, we simply complicate our whole order of living, and push happiness farther away from us. Every unnecessary thing we do takes away just so much of our time and strength from the necessary thing, which, if we did, would add to our strength, and make our lives of surest benefit to others. Sooner or later our American women must awake to this gospel of simplicity. A young wife starting out in her housekeeping to-day with a determination to keep it and her home simple, and thereby enable her to make her own life fuller and richer, need not fear that she will incur criticism. She is simply putting herself in line with a strong modern tendency. The senseless incumbrance of our homes and our lives with things that matter not, that push out the real and the vital, has caused enough damage to the freshness of our women, and stood long enough in the way of their finest and fullest development. A realization of this truth has come. The simple home and the simple life have taken on a new meaning, and with them will come a new womanhood. The thing that is worth while is the study of the hour. And that is what every wife, young or old, should stand for; the real, the simple, the natural, the thing worth while. That means that brightness of spirit that keeps us ever young no matter how the calendar may count our years. That is what cements love, strengthens congenial companionship between husband and wife, and keeps alive that beautiful consideration in the heart of a man for the companion of his life that is the finest and highest feeling that a man can treasure for a woman—not the consideration that a stronger vessel feels for a weaker one; but the consideration that elevates with each day; that refines a man; that commands the highest respect of himself, and brings out the best that is in him.