attack  of  appendicitis,  that  in  the  years  of  rapid  growth  no 
curvature  of  the  spine  is  developing,  that  “only  a cold”  is 
not  dealing  an  assassin  blow  at  some  vital  organ,  is  and  has 
been  enough  to  worry  many  a mother  into  an  untimely  grave. 
Browning’s  gruesome  tale  “Ivan  Ivanovitch” — the  record  of 
the  mother  who  failed — may  be  a needed  warning  to  those 
who,  like  poor  Louche,  could  say  “Perhaps  my  hands  relaxed 
their  grasp  — got  tangled  — God,  he  was  gone !”  but  too 
many  women  suffer  and  let  suffering  come  from  overstrain. 
In  the  effort  to  conserve  the  well  being  of  the  family  health 
in  every  particular  they  beggar  their  own  vitality  and  through 
actual  nervous  breakdown  or  through  over-anxiety,  expressed 
perhaps  in  nagging,  foreboding,  irritableness  or  other  forms 
of  worry,  rob  the  home  of  the  peaceful  atmosphere  most  con- 
ducive to  growth  and  health.  The  new-thought  movement 
with  its  positive  assertions  of  good,  and  its  calm  optimism  is 
helping  many  a household  to  a rhythmic  harmony  of  living 
conditions  which  is  most  essential  to  the  development  of  the 
best  vitality. 
After  all,  our  greatest  means  of  assisting  in  the  world’s  con- 
servation is  not  in  the  doing  of  tasks,  in  the  actual  practice 
of  domestic  and  therepeutic  economy  but  rather  in  the  educa- 
tive value  of  holding  for  ourselves  and  creating  in  those  about 
us  the  right  attitude  of  mind.  We  are  too  familiar  with  the 
phrase  “what  we  think  we  are”  fully  to  realize  its  best  sig- 
nificance. Acts  are  the  expressions  of  ideas.  Too  often  our 
acts,  well  intended,  it  may  be,  are  ineffective  because  the 
desultory  expression  of  desultory  ideas.  To  think  deeply  and 
clearly,  to  begin  to  see  into  the  great  scheme  of  things,  to  try 
to  “think  God’s  thoughts  after  Him”  is  to  gain  cohesion, — 
cohesion  with  the  law  and  order  of  the  universe.  The  hum- 
drum task,  the  oft  repeated  detail  of  household  duty  becomes 
fraught  with  meaning  and  relieved  of  pettiness  when  viewed 
in  the  cosmic  light.  Moving  in  a sense  of  essential  values  our 
unconscious  educative  influence  may  be  greater  than  the  “line 
upon  line”  we  consciously  try  to  teach.  Children  growing  up 
in  an  atmosphere  pure,  large  and  free,  mentally  and  spiritually 
as  well  as  physically,  will  go  into  the  world  equipped  with 
right  ideas  of  conserving  earth’s  products  and  reinforcing 
human  power.  Acts  for  inspection  of  foods,  filtration  systems 
for  drinking  water,  fresh  air  farms,  pure  milk  depots  for  in- 
fants, regulation  of  hours  and  working  conditions  in  factories, 
building  regulations  for  tenements,  parks  and  play-grounds, 
advancement  in  surgery,  war  to  the  death  against  cholera, 
yellow  fever,  plague  and  tuberculosis,  and  temperance  reform 
are  what  but  the  fruits  of  the  spirit — in  other  words,  the  result 
of  public  opinion? 
Let  us  live  and  work  to  greater  ends  yet,  doing  the  little 
necessary  tasks  in  the  large  sense  that  they  are  necessary,  and 
in  our  largeness  of  spirit  seeing  that  no  least  duty  is  undone. 
