on Mothers' Day, a white carnation--the flower chosen as the
symbol and emblem of motherhood.

Happily chosen emblem! What could more fittingly represent motherhood
with its whiteness symbolizing purity; its lasting qualities,
faithfulness; its fragrance, love; its wide field of growth, charity;
its form, beauty!

What an impressive and beautiful tribute to motherhood it would be for
a whole nation to unite one day in wearing its chosen emblem, and in
song and speech, and other appropriate exercises, to honor its mothers!

CHAPTER LX

WHY SO MANY MARRIED WOMEN DETERIORATE

A woman writes me: "You would laugh if you knew the time I have had in
getting the dollar which I enclose for your inspiring magazine. I would
get a pound less of butter, a bar less of soap. I never have a cent of
my own. Do you think it wrong of me to deceive my husband in this way?
I either have to do this or give up trying at all."

There are thousands of women who work harder than their husbands and
really have more right to the money, who are obliged to practise all
sorts of deceit in order to get enough to buy clothing and other things
essential to decent living.

The difficulty of extracting money from an unwilling husband has been the
beginning of thousands of tragedies. The majority of husbands are
inclined to exert a censorship over their wives' expenditures. I have
heard women say that they would go without necessary articles of clothing
and other requirements just as long as possible and worry for days and
weeks before they could summon courage to ask for money, because they
dreaded a scene and the consequent discord in the home. Many women make
it a rule never to ask for money, except when the husband is leaving the
house and in a hurry to get away. The disagreeable scene is thus cut as
short as possible, as he has not time then to go into all the details of
his wife's alleged extravagances and find out what has become of every
cent of the money given her on some similar previous occasion.

The average man does not begin to realize how it humiliates his wife to
feel that she must ask him for fifty cents, a dollar, or five dollars
every time she needs it, and to tell him just exactly what she is going
to do with it, and then perhaps be met with a sharp reproof for her
extravagance of foolish expenditures.

Men who are extremely kind and considerate with their wives in most
things are often contemptibly mean regardi