Part 18 (1/2)
It was a very important thing that they should have a good dinner that day. Christ was hungry, and He did not often have a luxurious entertainment. Alas, me! if the duty had devolved upon Mary what a repast that would have been! But something went wrong in the kitchen.
Perhaps the fire would not burn, or the bread would not bake, or Martha scalded her hand, or something was burned black that ought only to have been made brown; and Martha lost her patience, and forgetting the proprieties of the occasion, with besweated brow, and perhaps with pitcher in one hand and tongs in the other, she rushes out of the kitchen into the presence of Christ, saying: ”Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?”
Christ scolded not a word. If it were scolding I should rather have his scolding than anybody else's blessing. There was nothing acerb. He knew Martha had almost worked herself to death to get Him something to eat, and so He throws a world of tenderness into His intonation as He seems to say: ”My dear woman, do not worry; let the dinner go; sit down on this ottoman beside Mary, your younger sister. Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful.” As Martha throws open that kitchen door I look in and see a great many household perplexities and anxieties.
NON-APPRECIATION.
First, there is the trial of non-appreciation. That is what made Martha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her older sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of the store, and office, and shop, or coming from the Stock Exchange, they say when they get home: ”Oh, you ought to be in our factory a little while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty subordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are!”
Oh, sir, the wife and the mother has to conduct at the same time a university, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a library, while she is health officer, police and president of her realm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to keep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed to the utmost.
I know there are housekeepers who are so fortunate that they can sit in an arm-chair in the library, or lie on the belated pillow, and throw off all the care upon subordinates who, having large wages and great experience, can attend to all of the affairs of the household.
Those are the exception. I am speaking this morning of the great ma.s.s of housekeepers--the women to whom life is a struggle, and who, at thirty years of age, look as though they were forty, and at forty look as though they were fifty, and at fifty look as though they were sixty. The fallen at Chalons, and Austerlitz, and Gettysburg, and Waterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great Armageddon of the kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see that the tombstones all read beautifully poetic; but if those tombstones would speak the truth thousands of them would say: ”Here lies a woman killed by too much mending, and sewing, and baking, and scrubbing, and scouring; the weapon with which she was slain was a broom, or a sewing machine, or a ladle.”
A WEARING LIFE.
You think, O man of the world! that you have all the cares and anxieties. If the cares and anxieties of the household should come upon you for one week you would be a fit candidate for Bloomingdale--I mean insane asylum. The half-rested housekeeper arises in the morning. She must have the morning repast prepared at an irrevocable hour. What if the fire will not light; what if the marketing did not come; what if the clock has stopped--no matter, she must have the morning repast at an irrevocable hour. Then the children must be got off to school. What if their garments are torn; what if they do not know their lessons; what if they have lost a hat or sash--they must be ready. Then you have all the diet of the day, and perhaps of several days, to plan; but what if the butcher has sent meat unmasticable, or the grocer has sent articles of food adulterated, and what if some piece of silver be gone, or some favorite chalice be cracked, or the roof leak, or the plumbing fail, or any one of a thousand things occur--you must be ready.
Spring weather comes, and there must be a revolution in the family wardrobe, or autumn comes, and you must shut out the northern blast; but what if the moth has preceded you to the chest; what if, during the year, the children have outgrown the apparel of last year; what if the fas.h.i.+ons have changed. Your house must be an apothecary's shop; it must be a dispensary; there must be medicines for all sorts of ailments--something to loosen the croup, something to cool the burn, something to poultice the inflammation, something to silence the jumping tooth, something to soothe the ear-ache. You must be in half a dozen places at the same time, or you must attempt to be.
a.s.sURED SYMPATHY.
If, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient rush upon the library or drawing room, be patient, be lenient. Oh, woman, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of others in regard to your household toils let me a.s.sure you, from the kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that he appreciates all your work from garret to cellar; and that the G.o.d of Deborah, and Hannah, and Abigail and Grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and Hannah More is the G.o.d of the housekeeper.
Jesus was never married that he might be the especial friend and confidante of a whole world of troubled womanhood. I blunder; Christ was married. The Bible says that the Church is the Lamb's wife, and that makes me know that all Christian women have a right to go to Christ and tell Him of their annoyances and troubles, since by His oath of conjugal fidelity He is sworn to sympathize. George Herbert, the Christian poet, wrote two or three verses on this subject:
”The servant by this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, Makes this and the action fine.”
Again, there is the trial of
SEVERE ECONOMY.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are subjected to it--some under more and some under less stress of circ.u.mstances. Especially if a man smoke very expensive cigars, and take very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in demanding domestic economies. This is what kills tens of thousands of women--attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the bills come in! The woman is the banker of the household; she is the president, the cas.h.i.+er, the teller, the discount clerk; and there is a panic every few weeks! This thirty years' war against high prices, this perpetual study of economics, this life-long attempt to keep the outgoes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers.
A PREPARATION.
Oh, my sister, this is a part of the divine discipline! If it were best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front windows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked fifty times from the barrel in the pantry the barrel, like the one of Zarephath, would be full; and the shoes of the children would last as long as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness--forty years.
Beside that, this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the contrast. They never hunger there, and consequently there will be none of the nuisances of catering for appet.i.tes. And in the land of the white robe they never have to mend anything, and the air in that hill country makes everybody well. There are no rents to pay; every man owns his own house, and a mansion at that.
It will not be so great a change for you to have a chariot in heaven if you have been in the habit of riding in this world. It will not be so great a change for you to sit down on the banks of the river of life if in this world you had a country-seat; but if you have walked with tired feet in this world what a glorious change to mount celestial equipage; and if your life on earth was domestic martyrdom, oh, the joy of an eternity in which you shall have nothing to do except what you choose to do! Martha has had no drudgery for eighteen centuries! I quarrel with the theologians who want to distribute all the thrones of heaven among the John Knoxes and the Hugh Latimers, and the Theban Legion. Some of the brightest thrones of heaven will be kept for Christian housekeepers. Oh, what a change from here to there--from the time when they put down the rolling-pin to when they take up the sceptre! If Chatsworth Park and the Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue were to be lifted into the celestial city they would be considered uninhabitable rookeries, and glorified Lazarus would be ashamed to be seen going in and out of either of them.
THE TRIAL OF SICKNESS.