Marion Progress

POWELL PAINTINGS
SKETCHES OF LIFE
By Rev. H. P. Powell
WHAT THEN?

They lived on the same street, and in the same block, these two women of our story. One of them so looked upon life as to believe that to employ a housekeeper and share with her husband the responsibilities of a business life would bring greatest returns. This she undertook to do. She refused to allow home duties to spoil what she spoke of as her career. She made her plans to share with many others the social obligations most freely. Often she sacrificed her ideals because to do so was the popular thing.

The years passed on without any plans for making the house a home. It was just a place in which to eat, sleep and dress, with the regular scheduled social gathering. Now she and her husband are no longer young. They must retire from the gay life that they once lived. Wherein have they lived? In what have they profited?

The other woman in our story had the conviction that to have a home with a happy husband, boys and girls, was one of the noblest things that a woman could do. She gave herself to realize this ambition. It was not always easy. Some sacrifices were involved. There were times when she was weary. During such times the goal out yonder provided the necessary courage to carry on. Most of her afternoons and evenings were spent at home looking after the duties that were often very numerous.

Many people wondered about her. To them, she was wasting the best years of her life. They failed to see what she could be getting out of life. More than twenty years have passed now, and the scenes have changed. This mother who gave herself without compromise to her home has become the subject of great honor. She is the happy mother of two young men and one young woman all of whom hold places of influence and power wherever they are found. The young men hold positions that are filled only by men of sterling character. The daughter is the happy companion of a young man who has been chosen to fill a position that only the best of men occupy.

Did this good woman make a wrong decision? The following lines by Edgar A. Guest will answer the question:

"There's many a little woman that will be famous by and by., Though now her tasks are many and she often stops to sigh; She may be dusting, sweeping and she may be making bread, And toiling with her needle when her babes are put to bed, Her life seems bare and ugly, but behind it there's a plan, And the world will some day hail her as the mother of a man.

"There's little joy in slaving day by day on weary feet. In the constant scrubbing needful just to keep the cottage neat: There's little fame in sewing and the countless daily cares Or in teaching little people to repeat their evening prayers. But there's many a little woman smiling bravely as she can some day be a man.

"Pass her by you childless women, in your jewels and your furs! Now you revel in life's glory, and a dismal lot is hers, There are few who seem to know her for her hands with care are red And beneath her weight of burdens all her loveliness lies dead; But her name the world will honor, though she live or though she die, As a great man's noble mother she'll be famous by and by."