THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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even when somebody thinks it up for her. But it is fast changing; woman can think, and she is going slowly to get about it. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. Our liberty is going to cost us something. We must work;* we must get the order of work; we must love the law of labor. Labor is the law of development, the law of progress, and we must work freely, without let or hindrance from any mortal source. This ugly labor problem in our sacred institution the home, is perhaps our first great problem. It ties us hand and foot—just now—we must first learn the great lesson of labor, its laws, its base of energies and its productive nature, its blessedness, and its mission to us.
We must capture its life, appropriate its strength by overcoming it; we must master it, make it a joy, reduce it to order and system. This takes study and time and opportunity, but every one of us can have a hand in it, each in her own way, in her own life. Think, plan, experiment, invent, investigate, get the best method. Support and organize training schools. Make our work what other work in the world is, a science and an art. There is a law and order method in housekeeping. It is a mark of most joyous hope for our future that what Frances Power Cobb said some years ago is fast coming true. Said she: “It is not high genius, but feeble inability to cope with domestic government, which generally inspires the women who wish to abdicate the throne of home and take to the homeless American boarding house, or to the continental pension.” Our women of genius are not abdicating home, and our most highly educated women are the ones who are awakening to these facts. They study to make housework not a thing of drudgery, but the sacred intelligent foundation of all other arts, and that it is the “houseband” that keeps the home together. Home arts succor nourish, and bless mankind in every way.
The Sweetest Lives.
The sweetest lives are those to duty wed,
Whose deeds, both great and small,
Are close-knit strands of an unbroken thread Where love ennobles all;
The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells,
The Book of Life the shining record tells.
Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes After its own life-working. A child’s kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.
— Mrs. Browning.