indifference I Poor me! Perverse he!

Poor Martha, troubled about many things, when only one thing is
needful--a quiet mind and faithful soul. History does not state if
Martha had a husband. If she did, he was perpetually downtown. And Jesus
preferred Mary, the Comfortable One, to Martha. Poor lonesome Martha!
And she tried _so hard_ to please.

I used to know a woman who never did a thing but look sweet. She was
pretty and sympathetic and _cheery_. Her husband and six children
idolized her, and fairly fell over themselves to please her and keep the
home beautiful for her. There was physical energy galore lavished
_gladly_ by the family, in doing what is commonly considered the
mother's work.

And there was apparently nothing whatever the matter with that woman,
who was always sweet and pretty as a new blown rose, and looked not a
day over twenty. She was simply born tired and wouldn't work. Of course
the neighbors said things about her; but nobody _could_ say things _to_
such a sweet tempered, cordial and pretty woman. And there'd have been
razors flying through the air if anybody had dared hint to that husband
or one of those children that mother was anything less than perfection.
The family explanation was that "mother is not strong."

But that mother did more for that family than all the others put
together. _She made the atmosphere_, and she was the life-giving sun
around which husband and children revolved, and from which they received
the real Light of Life--the power which develops the good in us.

The mother's main business in life was that of _appreciating_. She was