Now, it may be that these women wouldn't know how miserable they were, if I didn't tell them of it. So much the worse, then. I only know that if life were _all work_ to me, it should go hard but I would try to catch a sunbeam now and then, if it were only that the children might not be demoralized by growing up to look at me in the light of a dray-horse; if it were only that my boys need not expect _their_ wives to close their eyes and ears to the beauty and harmony which God had scattered so lavishly about them. Because there are rocks, shall there be no roses? Because there is dust, shall there be no dew?
Do you do well, my sisters, to make your houses so gloomy that your husbands would rather roost outside upon the stone fences, than stay in them? Don't _have_ a "best carpet;" don't _have_ a "best sofa." Let in the sun, and the birds, and the children, though it involve bare floors and wooden chairs, and the total banishment of General Washington and that best looking-glass. _Eat_ in your "best parlor," and laugh in it; don't save it up to be laid out in! Try it now, and see if life isn't a different thing to you all. As to your "work," a great deal of it is unnecessary. John and the children would be much better without pies, cakes, and doughnuts. Make it your religion to give them wholesome bread and meat, and then stop and take a little breath. Nobody will thank you for turning yourself into a machine. When you drop in your tracks, they will just shovel the earth over you, and get Jerusha Ann Somebody to step into your shoes. They wont cry a bit. You never stopped to say a word to them except "_get out of my way_." To be sure, you were working hard for them all the while, but that wont be remembered. So you just take a little comfort yourself as you go along, and look after "No 1." Laugh more and darn less; they will like you twice as well. If there is more work than you can consistently do, _don't do it_. Sometimes there is a little blossom of a daughter in a family who makes everything bright with her finger-tips; if there is none in yours, do _you_ be that blossom. Don't, even for John, let your children remember home as a charnel-house, and you as its female sexton.