When we get to taking life too seriously, and philosophizing too strenuously, we need a tonic of cheer and humor. Just such a letter as the following one from "Bill's Wife" touches the spot. In the series of discussions of husbands and farm life this sums up the matter pretty fully. It reads as though there is nothing much to it but fun; but it is a good, sound philosophy of life , after all. "Bill's Wife" sees her own faults as well as her husband's; she sees the short-comings of farm life as well as its advantages; and she winds up by saying, "After all, I'd rather Bill was my husband than the husband of some one else!"
It sounds frivolous, but it is really as serious as life itself. We might each make up our minds to be satisfied without our own circumstances and improve them by our own efforts; for we would, none of us, be satisfied with anybody else's. And if we find much that is not to our liking, the best place to begin improvement is with ourselves. According to the old negro spiritual, "It ain't my father nor my mother, my sister nor my bother; it's ME, O Lord! that's stand-in' in the need of prayer!"
Having this old melody on my mind, I must have been singing it unconsciously about the house; for just now I overheard Sonny singing lustily, while he punted nails in his board. "It ain't my fathah nor my mothah; it'th me, O Lo-o-ord! thath standin' in the Needham prayah!" --Hope
Memory Gem
"So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind;
When just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs."--Selected