--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Curtis, Theodore E. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 16 number: 4 published: 1913-02 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Curtis, Theodore E., "As We Journey Along the Road. A Poem," *Improvement Era* 16, no. 4 (February 1913): 303–304.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1604unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1604unse start_page: 303 end_page: 304 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1913-02) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1604unse publication_year: 1913 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1913, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # As We Journey Along the Road. A Poem As We Journey Along the Road It isn't the things we say, dear, Nor the things we idly dream; It's the things we do every day, dear, That carry us up the stream. It isn't the tears we shed, dear, O'er things which are past and gone; It's the tug at the oar, For the sunny shore, That carries us on and on. It isn't the flowers which have blushed, dear. And died on life's thorny way; It isn't the songs that are hushed, dear, That gladden our hearts today; It isn't the love that is dead, dear, That lightens life's weary load, It's the flower, and the song, And the love full strong, As we journey along the road. Theodore E. Curtis. Little Problems of Married Life.' BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN XVII — When the Family Interferes Many a good matrimonial ship, with its sunlit cargo of happiness and hope, has been wrecked on the rocks of family interference. If it were customary to erect tombstones to the memory of dead loves, the cause of the death of marital happiness in thousands of homes might be given in the chiselled epitaph : "Died !" from an Overdose of the Interference of Relatives If there be one place in the world where the justice of "Home — Rule" should be unquestioned, that place is the home. Marriage makes the couple a new firm, an independent partnership, not a branch house under the management of a parent company. It is a home trust controlled by two. No matter how loving, kind, solicitous and anxious the family of either partner may be for the success of the new firm, they must realize that they do not own it, that they are not stockholders, are not on the board of directors and must not interfere in the management. They may stand ready and willing to give loving counsel, sympathetic suggestion, and help and service in any emergency when needed and desired, but it is unwarranted to interfere. unfair, unnecessary, was interference and bad advice that spoiled the first mar- It riage, started the first quarrel, and broke up the first home in the world in those early days, long, long ago when Eden was the only spot on earth that had even a name. This was the first lesson to man, and now after sixty centuries some people have not learned it yet. Husband and wife must work out their own problems in their own way. They must do it by the best light of their united wisdom, not by the flickering torches of obtruded advice from the family. They must convert their experiments into experience, transmute little failures into great successes and little failings into *Copyright 1910, by Fleming H. Revell Company.