So she sweeps, scrubs, cleans from morning until night; carefully removes every trace of dust, follows her family with dust-pan and brush, and at least looks reproachfully at the offender who does not remove every trace of street or garden dirt from his shoes before entering the house. She cleans so hard that she forgets that the real object of cleaning is to make her family safe and comfortable. They may be safe, but they are a long way from being comfortable, and she knows no more comfort than they; cleanliness has become a fetich with her, and some day, perhaps, she comes to her senses, finding herself chasing the motes in a sunbeam, lest by chance they should rest upon her sacred furniture. If she then sits down to take stock of things, she finds that husband and children almost dread to come home. However serene and happy they may be before reaching the garden gate, or the apartment door, they then become nervous and distrait. They look themselves over, to be sure that nothing is amiss, for “mother is so particular.” An anxious expression settles upon their faces, for, with their best endeavors, they may have overlooked something that mother’s trained and suspicious eye may note. The joy of life abates, and a sort of painful hush falls upon things. The average child cannot see that this condition grows out of misdirected love and care; he sees no connection between it and his well-being, but, if he thinks of it at all, he concludes that “the house” counts for more with mother than anything else. Husband and children unconsciously come to regard her as mainly a housekeeper, with interests bounded by the four walls of the home. The very gifts they make her are of a useful nature—“something for the house”—as if the “house” were some special thing in her personal life but meant nothing to them. When the hungry heart of this woman pains her, she resents the condition that she herself has created, but does not see the correct remedy. Her husband and children have put her out of their inner lives; they take their pleasures away from home, they find their confidantes among outside friends. Who should share their thoughts and their pleasures? she asks. Who has worked day and night for their comfort and happiness as she has? And the chances are that she considers them ungrateful and herself a martyr, when all the time she herself builds the barrier between them and herself by striving to make them happy in her way. That it is not their way, and so could not be in harmony with the natural trend of things, does not once occur to her. As the French say, “Madam costs herself too much.” She has not learned, and may never learn, that the only way to make others happy is to love them sincerely and unselfishly enough to allow them to be happy in their own way.