A woman who does her housework without assistance should expend some of her conscientiousness upon getting a rest. Fourteen hours is too long a work-day for any one. She must get it out of her mind that to rest is to acknowledge defeat and weakness; far from it--it is such a difficult thing to do that she will probably have to learn how. Some people find that it rests them most to lie down and read a pleasant book; others can, or can teach themselves, to sleep. Others, yet, find that to do nothing is like slipping the belt off the fly-wheel of an engine, their minds run the faster for having no work to hold them back. A remedy for this is just to say one's prayers--not prayers of asking, but prayers of realization, of companionship. There is also relief which should be accepted or secured for oneself as the work is being done. To change one's broom from side to side; to carry a pail first in one hand then in the other; to straighten one's body and fill one's lungs now and again when washing or ironing or sewing; to spare one's hands and feet; to occupy the time spent in long tasks with pleasant thoughts--all these are things which help us to be well and glad and to keep the secret that we are sometimes tired and troubled. To return now to the other type of housekeeping secrets; it is less unsafe to share pleasant secrets than painful ones, but often even these are better kept. Unusual expedients, surprising shifts, the plan which pops into your head at dinner for using a left-over to-morrow are all better kept to oneself, or at least kept until the thing is so far past that only the funny side of it remains. The girl in Miss Austen's "A Nameless Nobleman," who basted her grandmother's bed-curtains and valance into a wedding dress and refused to tell where it had come from had woman wisdom. Her husband appreciated the joke much more when, a few months later, he saw the same embroidery adorning his bed. We need to realize the dignity and usefulness of housekeeping; we must recognize that it is an active, clever employment in which there is much to learn, much to be found out; we may well regard it as a profession deserving our strength and time for life--and yet---- We must never be so absorbed in its importance or occupied with its affairs, that we cannot be quiet, and listen. For it may be that across many, many years we shall hear a voice saying lovingly and yet reprovingly: "Martha, Martha----" Perhaps we may need to lie awake and question ourselves, as I think that other Martha must have done in the still night at Bethany. Why should earnest, careful service be unacceptable? Why does a weary guest, who often has hardly the time to eat bread, care little for a feast? Is there something more required of a woman than keeping her household warmed and fed, and something less required than notable success in her own work?