After a thousand victories, once foiled,
Is from the book of honor razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which _she_ toiled."

Many a toiling housewife, warring against untidiness, has felt the
truth of these lines, though she may not have known that the great
poet embodied it in words.

One mistake of man's is, that he does not look upon the tidy state of
a room as a result, but as one into which, if left to itself, it would
naturally fall and remain. We know, alas! too well, that every room
not only has within itself possibilities of untidiness, but that its
constant tendency is in that direction, which tendency can only be
checked by as constant a vigilance. Again, husbands do not always seem
to understand plain English. There are certain expressions in common
use among women, which, if husbands did understand plain English,
would make them sadder and wiser men. "I'm completely used up;" "I
never know what 'tis to feel rested;" "I'm too tired to sleep;" "I'm
as tired in the morning as when I go to bed;" "Every nerve in me
throbs so that I can't go to sleep;" "The life has all gone out of
me;" "I am crazed with cares;" "The care is worse than the work;"
"Nothing keeps that woman about the house but her ambition;" "It is
the excitement of work that keeps her up." Now, how is it that a woman
works on after she is completely used up? What is the substance, the
capacity of this "ambition" on which alone she lives? A friend of
mine, in answer to a suggestion that she should stop and take a few
days' rest, said, "I don't dare to stop. If I let down, if I give way
for ever so little while, I never could go on again." Think of living
always in this state of tension! The dictionary definition of
"tension" is "a peculiar, abnormal, constrained condition of the