The Queer Little List by Ruth Cameron

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · May 9, 1912

The Queer Little List

By Ruth Cameron

"THERE," said the little lady who is always doing original things, as she rolled up the darned stocking with the whole one in that memorial fashion of all housewives, and tossed it into the mended pile. "There, now, I can cross that off my list."

"What list?" I inquired.

"O, didn't you ever see my list?" she laughed. "Well, almost every morning I make out a little list of the things I have to do; and then as I get them done, I check them off; and you don't know how it helps."

"Here," she brought out a folded paper from under the cloth. "Here's my list for to-day. Of course I don't put down the routine things, like dishes and beds."

The list reads:— Darn the stockings. Make a batch of cookies. Mend Fred's trousers. Put Jeannette's coat in the chest. Clean the silver. Brush up the living-room and dining-room. Finish embroidering table-cover. Four of the seven items were checked off.

"Every one laughs at me," defended the lady who is always doing original things, "and some say they should think I'd rather have the time to do the things instead of writing them down; but truly it helps. In the first place, it keeps me from forgetting the most important thing I have to do, the way I used to. And in the second place, it takes the load of remembering off my mind. Really, I used to be always thinking in the back of my head, 'Now, what was I going to do next?' Now I simply attend to what I'm doing, and then when I get it done, I look at my list.

"And then I get such a satisfaction out of checking things off when they're done. It's like the way my mother used to do when I was going to have some pleasure that it seemed to me I couldn't wait for. She'd cut me out a string of paper dolls, one for each day before the day of pleasure, and I would tear one off each night, and it helped so much."

If there really was a twinkle in my eye, I think it had vanished before the end of the lady's plea for her quaint little custom.

Some great person has said something to the effect that the wise folks in this world are the folks who refuse to grow up, who play at life as if it were a game, and die still happy children.

Don't you think he would have loved the lady who is always doing original things, and her quaint little list? — Northwestern Christian Advocate.