A mother, who is anxiously trying to reconcile the watchful care and training of her little ones with the maintenance of fashionable calls and parties, may lose her life in the effort to do both, and do both in so imperfect a manner as never to give her a moment’s peace. But on the morrow after she comes to the serious and Christian resolve, “The training of my children is all that I _can_ do well, and henceforth it shall be my _sole_ object,” there falls into her tumultuous life a Sabbath pause of peace and leisure. It is true that she is still doing a work in which absolute perfection ever recedes; but she can make relative attainments far nearer the standard than before. Lastly, under the head of ideality let us resolve _to be satisfied with our own past doings, when at the time of doing we used all the light God gave us, and did all in our power_. The backward action of ideality is often full as tormenting as its forward and prospective movements. The moment a thing is done and over, one would think that good sense would lead us to drop it like a stone in the ocean; but the morbid idealist cannot cut loose from the past. “Was that, after all, the _best_ thing? Would it not have been better so or so?” And the self-tormented individual lies wakeful, during weary night-hours, revolving a thousand possibilities, and conjuring up a thousand vague perhapses. “If I had only done _so_ now, perhaps this result would have followed, or that would not”; and as there is never any saying but that so it might have turned out, the labyrinth and the discontent are alike endless. Now there is grand good sense in the Apostle’s direction, “Forgetting the things that are behind, press forward.” The idealist should charge himself, as with an oath of God, to let the past alone as an accomplished fact, solely concerning himself with the inquiry, “Did I not do the best I _then_ knew how?” The maxim of the Quietists is, that, when we have acted according to the best light we have, we have expressed the will of God under those circumstances,--since, had it been otherwise, more and different light would have been given us; and with the will of God done by ourselves as by Himself, it is our duty to be content. * * * * * Having written thus far in my article, and finding nothing more at hand to add to it, I went into the parlor to read it to Jenny and Mrs. Crowfield. I found the former engaged in the task of binding sixty yards of quilling, (so I think she called it,) which were absolutely necessary for perfecting a dress; and the latter was braiding one of seven little petticoats, stamped with elaborate patterns, which she had taken from Marianne, because that virtuous matron was ruining her eyes and health in a blind push to get them done before October. Both approved and admired my piece, and I thought of Saint Anthony’s preaching the fishes:--