The old year glided away so smoothly, day succeeding day, month following month, with no abrupt endings that we hardly noted the passage of the hours. Winter melted into spring, spring lingered awhile with her birds and flowers, then warmed into summer. Summer fruits ripened and dropped into autumn’s lap, and autumn amid a shower of falling leaves moved on toward winter again. The old year ends promptly at the midnight hour and goes out in the solemn darkness and again the circle is complete. If the old year had its hours of bitter sorrow it had its times of holy joy. Many of the dear old friends live only in memory but we have hosts of new ones. The true-hearted meet the new year with a hope and a prayer that in its day they may “rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.” The housewife and mother are among the many who desire to attain great excellence. With her it may mean a desire to be self-forgetful and to observe to a letter the principles in the motto “keep sweet,” or it may be an effort to give up her mind to work that is unpleasant or disliked. Or it may mean a stronger effort to systematize her work; to do it better with less labor or perform it in an orderly fashion, where before she has done it in a slipshod or desultory way.
If the motto “keep sweet” was lived up to in the new year would not our little world of home be better for it? Even if its influence reached no further would it not be worth the while? To “keep sweet” one must possess a happy unconsciousness of self and enthusiasm about the little
things that fill the hours of every day and an absence of malice and envy. One must have a bright outlook on life and a courageous heart. Such an outlook and such a heart are invaluable to the housewife. They cheer herself and those under her influence. “The hand that moves the world” surely should pulse with high courage that comes from a brave and true heart.
(Walnut Bureau, February 9, 1906, p. 4)
KH