For why should it not do all these things? Lawyers, doctors and teachers give all their time and thought to their work; nurses, companions and secretaries do not have much time to go out; women who stand behind counters, tend looms or sit at switchboards are often too tired even for pleasure when the day's work is done. A woman who earns her part of the family living by making a home cannot expect to be delivered from toil. Is it likely that she can succeed in a difficult profession without giving up pleasures and ease for its sake, without working as hard and as unquestioningly as the men of her family do for their part of the family support?

Some people say that we regard the profession of housekeeping unreasonably because women are by nature lazy, frivolous, and not capable of very much intellectually. Now, though I humbly acknowledge that these things may have to do with it, yet I believe, as was at first suggested, that there is a chief reason for the serious distaste we often feel for the profession. This reason is, that a certain reticence and effacement, which every one should exercise in regard to his work, is required of housekeepers in unusual measure.

People who can think and talk of nothing but their own work and interests are very difficult people; a housekeeper who has this fault is not only difficult, she is dangerous. For women who make their housekeeping an idol pretty soon begin to offer it human sacrifice.

I remember hearing, as a child, a woman say of another who was an immaculate housekeeper: "She swept her sons to the Devil." A puzzling saying to me then, a terrible one to me now, for it was true. Those sons were never allowed in the house till they had taken off their shoes; they were not allowed in the yard because they made a litter. Naturally, they went to those places which opened to them most easily—the street, the saloon, the state's prison.

This is an extreme case, but there are countless others, grading from those as serious as this to those in which homes just miss being comfortable on account of tiny, gnat-like annoyances. They are cases of failure in the woman's profession, and, trivial or great, they arise from the same cause, from the neglect of that thing we don't like about housekeeping—its unique characteristic—its effacement. Our work as housekeepers is only notable when it is not noticed. It must be done, delighted in and loved but seldom talked about and always held subservient to other ends. Housekeeping is the servant, silent and effaced, of peace, and home-likeness and health and joy, and of all that we call spiritual in those who form our households.

And therefore, the housekeeper's life is full of little secrets; secrets of suffering and weariness, secrets of amusement and joy. But they are secrets which spoil her work if they are told. If one is a martyr, one must not tell about it. The saints who wore hair shirts did not cut a hole in the front of their clothes to show them. The woman who is always telling how much she has to do and how much she "has to put up with," has not stopped at cutting a hole in her clothes, she wears her hair shirt on the outside to scratch other people with. Do you remember Mr. Pip's sister, in "Great Expectations," who constantly reminded the family that she never took her apron off?

It is natural in this connection to say a word about the care of the housewife's own health and cheerfulness. Better even than to conceal weariness and depression is to have none to conceal. Some women are for years driven and spurred beyond reason by what we please ourselves with calling conscientiousness or energy, but find at last that it was undisciplined ambition, or a stupid lack of system, or that we were blinded to the comfort and pleasure of other people by a determination to sacrifice ourselves.

A woman who does her housework without assistance should expend some of her conscientiousness upon getting a rest. Fourteen hours is too long a work-day for any one. She must get it out of her mind that to rest is to acknowledge defeat and weakness; far from it—it is such a difficult thing to do that she will probably have to learn how. Some people find that it rests them most to lie down and read a pleasant book; others can, or can teach themselves, to sleep. Others, yet, find that to do nothing is like slipping the belt off the fly-wheel of an engine, their minds run the faster for having no work to hold them back. A remedy for this is just to say one's prayers—not prayers of asking, but prayers of realization, of companionship.

There is also relief which should be accepted or secured for oneself as the work is being done. To change one's broom from side to side; to carry a pail first in one hand then in the other; to straighten one's body and fill one's lungs now and again when washing or ironing or sewing; to spare one's hands and feet; to occupy the time spent in long tasks with pleasant thoughts—all these are things which help us to be well and glad and to keep the secret that we are sometimes tired and troubled.

To return now to the other type of housekeeping secrets; it is less unsafe to share pleasant secrets than painful ones, but often even these are better kept. Unusual expedients, surprising shifts, the plan which pops into your head at dinner for using a left-over to-morrow are all better kept to oneself, or at least kept until the thing is so far past that only the funny side of it remains. The girl in Miss Austen's "A Nameless Nobleman," who basted her grandmother's bed-curtains and valance into a wedding dress and refused to tell where it had come from had woman wisdom. Her husband appreciated the joke much more when, a few months later, he saw the same embroidery adorning his bed.

We need to realize the dignity and usefulness of housekeeping; we must recognize that it is an active, clever employment in which there is much to learn, much to be found out; we may well regard it as a profession deserving our strength and time for life—and yet——

We must never be so absorbed in its importance or occupied with its affairs, that we cannot be quiet, and listen. For it may be that across many, many years we shall hear a voice saying lovingly and yet reprovingly: "Martha, Martha——" Perhaps we may need to lie awake and question ourselves, as I think that other Martha must have done in the still night at Bethany. Why should earnest, careful service be unacceptable? Why does a weary guest, who often has hardly the time to eat bread, care little for a feast? Is there something more required of a woman than keeping her household warmed and fed, and something less required than notable success in her own work?

Doubtless that other Martha sobbed herself quiet at last over her failure and reproof, and then in the quietness remembered that in the guest chamber her Guest lay at rest.