Ingenuity

1102 IMPROVEMENT ERA essary that they should even agree as to the value of each other's pursuits or views, but that both should know them, understand them and respect them and be lovingly tolerant where they are not united in their sentiment or desires. They should give ever their best to each other. When the husband is a clever, delightful companion at some one else's dinner-table, but a sad, still-life study in silence at his own, he is not giving his best at home. He is retaining his best for the export trade and reserving none for home consumption. When the wife has charity, consideration and sympathy for the cares of others outside the home, and only sharpness and sarcasm for those inside, the time-table of that home requires instant revision or there will be a crashing disaster to their train of happiness. Sources of discord multiply like Australian rabbits when the growing apart intensifies. It is the sacred duty of both to prevent it at the very beginning, to determine that they will permit no thoughtlessness, no drifting, no false sense of duty to family or to the world, to separate them from each other. ("Throwing Overboard the Old Friends" will be discussed in the next chapter, and eight chapters more will conclude this series in volume 16 of the Era.) Ingenuity A young man whose mother in her girlhood crossed the plains, relates the following anecdote from her life showing that ingenuity is a most excellent characteristic, and was needed in pioneer times. It is no less necessary today, to those who would succeed : "One day on the plains my mother and a companion, while the train was encamped near a beautiful river, went down to the waters to bathe, and there discovered that a recent flood had subsided, and had left in a hollow near the river a large number of fish which were still alive and fresh. They had nothing to carry the fish in, and were so far from camp that if they returned it would be impossible for them to go back in time before the train left to get the fish which were very much needed to replenish the larder of the emigrants. In keeping with the necessity for ingenuity, on the part of these early travelers, what did she do but take off her jacket, tie the sleeves with a string, fill them with fish, and so carry them to camp." T