and
comfortable.

The dying Queen of England gasped that after her death there would be
found stamped upon her heart the name of the Calais lost to her
kingdom in her reign. Our housewife carries her household forever
bound upon her heart of hearts. The word is the hall mark upon every
endeavor and achievement. It would be a poor recompense for a life of
patient toil to convince her that she has wrought needlessly; that the
same energy devoted to other objects would have made a nobler woman of
her and the world better and happier. Nor am I sure that in a majority
of instances this would be true. On the contrary, I hold religiously
to the belief that God had wise reasons for setting each one of us in
the socket in which she finds herself. "Be more careful," says an old
writer, "to please Him perfectly than to serve Him much." If there are
tasks which you, my sister, cannot demit without inconveniencing those
whose welfare is your especial care, take this as a sure proof that
the Father, in laying this work nearest to your hand--and not to that
of another--has called you to it as distinctly as He called Paul to
preach and Peter to glorify his Lord by the death he was to die.

In the talk we hold with our four feet upon the fender, the fire-glow
making other light unnecessary, I do not propose to enter upon the
favorite theme with some, of what you might have done had
circumstances been propitious to the assumption of what are rated as
more dignified duties. We will take your life as it is, and see what
the practice of the inward grace I shall designate can make of it.

You are inclined to be down-hearted upon anniversaries. You need not
tell me what I know so well of myself. Another year has gone, another
year has dawned, and you are in the same old rut of ordering and
cooking meals and clearing up after they have been eaten, sweeping,
dusting, making and mending clothes, washing, dressing and training
children, and the thousand and one nameless tasks that fritter away
strength, leaving nothing to show for the waste.

"God help us on the common days,
The level stretches white with dust!"

prays Margaret Sangster. You would cry out in the pain of
retrospection and anticipation, that all the days of the years of your
life are common days--"only that and nothing more."

If this be so, you need the Help none ever seek in vain more than
those to whom varied and exciting scenes are alloted.

The angel of death w