I am fond of reading, and spend several hours each day with my books.
Helen laughs at my library, and says she does not understand how I
can like such old-fashioned books as I have; perhaps the very reason
that they suit me is that they are old-fashioned. At all
events, there is sound, good sense in the volumes. There is
Franklin, for instance: what a mine of valuable thoughts in his
works! I was reading in my Franklin only this morning, and I paused
over this passage: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander
time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” Shortly after, as I
sat with my sewing, the second Miss Black called.
She cried out: “Always busy, Miss Sophronia! Here is your
work-basket full, and I see your book is open on the table. What in
the world do you find to do? I never find anything.”
“Then, my dear,” I replied, “you must be living with your eyes
shut, for I never yet saw any one to whom the world did not offer
plenty to do. When God created Adam, he created also a business for
Adam; he did not make him a gentleman of leisure, with the first
years of Creation hanging heavily upon his hands; and so, ever since,
when God sends a reasonable soul into the world, he sends with it its
especial work and round of duties, which belong to no other soul:
believe me, God investigates our doings here, and will make inquiry
whether or not we performed this work which he intends for our
doing.”
“You look so seriously at things, Miss Sophronia; but do tell me
what you find to do. You have your nice house, your good servant,
your income: you might sit with folded hands.”
“So I might, but I should hear a voice in my ears: ‘What doest
thou here?’ And by-and-by God would call upon me: ‘Give an
account of thy stewardship;’ and being compelled to speak the
truth, suppose that I must say: ‘O, I was in easy circumstances,
and I sat with my hands folded.’ But you ask what I do. I have my
housekeeping to look to, my friends to make comfortable when they
visit me, and my sewing to do. Next I have my social duties: I am at
leisure, and the experience of several tens of years is in my
keeping; therefore I feel an especial call to visit the sick. When a
family is down with measles, or scarlet fever, or some other
epidemic, why should they be neglected, or the mother be over-taxed,
when I am at leisure to help? So, in accidents, I am often sent for:
thus my work among the sick fills up a good many hours.
"Then there
are aged people who cannot go abroad, and chronic invalids who get
very lonely in their rooms, and feel as if they were forgotten: I
visit them. The poor are Christ’s legacy to all those of his
people who are able to help them, and I have my rounds among the
poor, helping them with gifts, securing work for them, advising them,
getting them into church and Sunday-school. I have also my church
work: having leisure, good health and a few dollars to spare, I ought
to help in the benevolent schemes of my church, and I do that. But,
while helping others, I must not forget my own; and my nieces have
young families. I can be a great help to them by taking home part of
their sewing and mending, taking a child home here for a week if the
mother is sick, knitting the little mittens and stockings: these are
trifles, but they lighten domestic cares for busy mothers. Then once
a year Christmas comes, and I want to make presents to my nieces and
their servants, to my servants and poor friends.
"So, my dear Miss
Black, I find work for all my time, and I have given you this sketch
of it, because you asked me, and because, as you say you have nothing
to do, I hoped it might be useful to you in suggesting lines of work.
But, as one of a large family, I should suppose you would find work
in abundance.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Miss Black. “Mother keeps the
house, and then there are the servants to do the work.”
“Did you never see your mother over-worked? Is she not toiling
sometimes until greatly fatigued, or when she has a headache? Pardon
me: does not your mother look too old for her years? Could not her
daughters have saved her some of that extra work which wears her
out?”
“Why don’t she ask help, then? She never does,” cried Miss
Black.
“Some mothers have a false idea of increasing their children’s
happiness by not asking them to work; and then, help freely offered
is better than help demanded, or asked for half a dozen times, or
argued over. I have seen girls scowl at being asked to help for an
hour a mother who had been toiling exhaustingly for eight hours. I
have seen other girls who, with quick eye, sought out every place
where they could help, and when finally bidden by the busy mother to
go dress, walk, read or visit, begged to be allowed some other share
of work until they might both be done together. But, Miss Black, as
we are on this subject, and you have introduced it, do you never see
your servants over-worked? the kitchen-servant ready to drop with
fatigue, when you might cheer and relieve her by making a cake, a few
pies, a pan of biscuits or setting a table? Could you not find a
time when the other maid, who does up-stairs’ work and sewing,
would be saved from really too severe driving, if you swept and
dusted a room or two, or lent the aid of your needle in the
sewing-room?”
“Dear me, it never entered my head,” replied the young lady. “I
do as much as my sisters, and we all do nothing. I fix up little
trimmings, fancy collars and cuffs, or such things, now and then, as
I need them. I put the flowers in the parlor, and help my sister
make our bed. I read a book now and then if it is interesting, and I
practice some, and get ready my dress, if I am going to a party, and
I sit and look out of the window, or I take an afternoon nap: we sit
up so late, having evening callers; and I go shopping, and I walk
around the streets, or make a few calls, and — there, that is all I
do.”
“But, my dear girl, what of all this is useful to yourself or to
others? With what of all this is God pleased? What of all this is
the work which he sent into the world for your doing?”
“I’m sure I don’t know! You quite frighten me asking that.”
“Consider it is a question that must meet you some day, as it is
appointed unto all men once to die, and after that comes the
judgment. Reason would say, have an answer ready.”