e same sort that
prevented Mrs. John Williams from giving herself up to thinking, or
from thinking about anything but her own private affairs. Not that
Mrs. Williams gave herself up to scrubbing doors and windows and
cleaning pots and pans with her own hands, but she was "taken up" all
the same. When Christ was a babe on earth there was no room for him
in the inn, so to-day many a heart is so full that Christ and his
cause are turned out. If a heart is full how can it hold more? Do not
suppose that there was no thinking done by Mrs. Williams. She
superintended all her work and did much of her own sewing; as her
family was not small and her income not large, and she kept but one
servant, it took a vast deal of thinking and worrying to keep the
Williams family up to the standard, which was one not of neatness and
comfort simply, but that she should live in the same style as those
of her friends whose incomes were possibly twice as large as her own,
that her children's clothes should be just as fine and as fashionably
made as theirs, that she herself should be able to make as good an
appearance as the best when she went into society, that her parlour
should be furnished as far as in her lay, with all the elegance and
taste that the law of the fashionable world required. This was the
grand aim to which she bent all her energies.

Mrs. Williams was a member in good and regular standing of an
orthodox church. She regularly occupied her pew in the sanctuary, and
when she had no other engagement, attended the weekly prayer-meeting,
but the most persistent and zealous member of the "Ladies' Foreign
Missionary Society" had never succeeded in inducing her to attend
their monthly meetings, but just once. She took pains to explain it
carefully to her conscience that she believed in Foreign Missions,
but that didn't prove that it was necessary for her to spend a whole
afternoon each month hearing dry reports and "papers" about countries
with outlandish names. What good did that do anyway? It was
mysterious--how ladies could do justice to their families and spend
so much time out. As for herself she could scarcely keep up with her
calls. But then! they neglected their families, of course they did;
women that were always on a committee for something or other, and
running off here and there to all kinds of meetings. Very likely,
too, it just suited some women to get up on a platform before an
audience, and read a "paper" or "report." I