WELL ENOUGH | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1887

"WELL ENOUGH."

This was a favorite phrase of Georgie's. She used it upon all occasions, and lived up to it too. When she was thirteen her mother gave her a little bedroom all to herself, which she was to keep clean and in order with her own hands. One morning she was in there putting on her coat and hat in great haste to go to school. Her mother, happening to be passing, opened the door and looked in.

"Why, Georgie!" she exclaimed, "why didn't you put your room in order?"

"I did," said Georgie, going on buttoning with rapid fingers.

"My dear child, just look at it!" said her mother with an expressive gesture.

The pillows were placed crookedly on the bed, the towels flung on the rack without being folded, all the bureau drawers open a little, and a piece of string hanging out of one, etc.

"O mamma!" Georgie exclaimed, impatiently. "It will do well enough. I'm in such a hurry. I shall be late at school."

"You must not be late at school," said her mother, "but you must put your room in complete order as soon as you come home. I don't want you to get into the habit of doing things just half."

It was the same way with sewing. Mrs. Blair insisted that her girls should know how to sew, and Georgie learned very readily, but was so careless and so easily satisfied that her work often looked very badly, and was a great worry to her mother.

"O! won't it do well enough, mamma?" Georgie would say. "What's the use of being so awfully particular."

"It won't do until it is done just as well as you can do it," Mrs. Blair would reply, and many a piece of work the young lady was obliged to pick out and do over.

She carried the "well enough" system into her musical studies also, and of course it did not work well there. She was fond of music, learned with great ease, and played spiritedly, but her performance was spoiled by the way she had of dropping notes and slurring over hard passages which she was too lazy to practice sufficiently. It was in vain her teacher lectured her about such carelessness, and told her she must practice the difficult parts patiently until she could play them as rapidly as the rest; out of his hearing she played in her own fashion, and said it did well enough.

"What is that you are playing?" Elizabeth asked one time.

"It is that new Galop Mary Haines played the other evening," Georgie replied. "Isn't it pretty?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "but it doesn't sound just as it did when Mary played it."

"Well, I don't play it exactly as she did. You see the bass skips about so that I have to go down for the lower F's and B flats. I can't play fast enough, so I just play them all up here, and then I don't play the octaves in the right hand—just take the upper note."

"Seems to me," said her sister, "it would be better to go slower at first and learn it right, so as to play as it is written."

"Oh, this sounds well enough," said Georgie; and banged away perfectly satisfied.

Her father had a scrap-book in which he pasted newspaper articles he wished to keep. Sometimes when he was busy he asked Elizabeth to paste the pieces in, and this she did very neatly. Once when she was away from home, he said, "Georgie, won't you put these pieces in my book?"

"Yes sir, of course," she replied, quite proud to be asked.

He showed her how he wanted it done, and she set to work. At first she was very careful to get them all straight and smooth, so the first page she did was just as good as any of Elizabeth's; but soon she became tired of going so slowly and particularly, and began to slight the work. There were two or three little bits that were very hard to fit in nicely, and instead of persevering until they were right she hurried them in any way, saying to herself, "Oh, well, it won't matter if such little bits are crooked. It will look well enough."

But it looked very badly, the crooked pieces spoiling the whole page.

When her father looked at the book he said, "I'm very much obliged to you, Georgie; but—I'm afraid my little girl hasn't a very straight eye."

"Oh yes, I have, papa," said Georgie. "I know those pieces are a little crooked, but it is so very little, I thought you wouldn't mind."

Her father said nothing more, but he never asked her again to paste in pieces, and once when he brought out the book to show a certain political article to a gentleman he was talking with, she noticed he turned the botched page over very quickly, as if he was ashamed of it.

That is about the way Georgie does everything, and if she does not break herself of this bad habit of doing things just any way at all, she is not likely to grow up to be a very useful and reliable woman.—Presbyterian.