A man who feels that the destinies of a
nation are turning on the judgment and skill with which he plans and
executes, has a pressure of motive and an elevation of feeling which
are great safeguards against all that is low, trivial, and degrading.
So, an American mother and housekeeper who rightly estimates the long
train of influence which will pass down to thousands, whose destinies,
from generation to generation, will be modified by those decisions of
her will which regulate the temper, principles, and habits of her
family, must be elevated above petty temptations which would otherwise
assail her.
Again, a housekeeper should feel that she really has great difficulties
to meet and overcome. A person who wrongly thinks there is little
danger, can never maintain so faithful a guard as one who rightly
estimates the temptations which beset her. Nor can one who thinks that
they are trifling difficulties which she has to encounter, and trivial
temptations to which she must yield, so much enjoy the just reward of
conscious virtue and self-control as one who takes an opposite view
of the subject.
A third method is, for a woman deliberately to calculate on having her
best-arranged plans interfered with very often; and to be in such a
state of preparation that the evil will not come unawares.
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