| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 4 |
Page 5 |
Every home with its parents and children presents a problem of love, which only the spirit of quietness can solve. Tastes differ. Individuality is oftentimes strong and aggressive. There are almost sure to be willful, self-assertive spirits in even the smallest family, those that want their own way, that are not disposed to do even their fair share of the yielding. In some homes there are despotic spirits. In the best there are diversities of spirit, and the process of self-discipline and training requires years before the entire household can dwell together in ideal sweetness.
A German musician with an ear exquisitely sensitive to harmony, soon after arriving in our country was drawn by the sound of singing into a church, which he was passing. But the singing was most discordant, jarring painfully upon his trained ear. He could not courteously go out of the house while the service was in progress, and therefore he resolved to endure the torture as patiently as possible. But soon he distinguished, amid the discord of the congregation, one voice, the soft, clear voice of a woman, singing calmly, steadily, and truly. She was not disturbed by the noisy, discordant notes of her companions in the worship, but sang on patiently, firmly, and sweetly. And as the visitor listened, one voice after another was drawn by this one singer’s gentle influence into harmony. Until before the hymn had been finished, the whole congregation was singing in perfect unison.
So it is often in the making of a home. At first the individual lives are willful, uncontrolled, and self-assertive, and there is discord in the household life. It takes time and most patient love to bring all into sweet harmony. But if the wife and mother, the real homemaker, has learned the blessed lesson of quietness, her life is the one of calm, clear, true song, which never falters, and which brings all the other lives, little by little, up to its own gentle key, until at last the life of the home is indeed a sweet song of love.
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