d the
greater part of human beings from attaining in any direction the half of
what they see would be desirable; and the difference between the
miserable idealist and the contented realist often is not that both do
not see what needs to be done for perfection, but that, seeing it, one
is satisfied with the attainable, and the other forever frets and wears
himself out on the unattainable.

The principal of a large and complicated public institution was
complimented on maintaining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a
diversity of cares. "I've made up my mind to be satisfied, when things
are done _half_ as well as I would have them," was his answer; and the
same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic
sphere.

There is a saying which one often hears among common people, that such
and such a one are persons who never could be happy, unless everything
went "_just so_"--that is, in accordance with their highest conceptions.

When these persons are women, and undertake the sway of a home empire,
they are sure to be miserable, and to make others so; for home is a
place where by no kind of magic possible to woman can everything be
always made to go "just so."

We may read treatises on education,--and very excellent ones there are.
We may read very nice stories illustrating home management, in which
book-children and book-servants all work into the author's plan with
obliging unanimity; but every real child and real servant is an
uncompromising fact, whose working into our ideal of life cannot be
predicted with any degree of certainty. A husband is another absolute
fact, of whose conformity to any ideal conceptions no positive account
can be given. So, when a person has the most charming theories of
education, the most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot to sit
bound hand and foot and see them all trampled under the heel of opposing
circumstances.

Nothing is easier than to make an ideal garden. We lay out our grounds,
dig, plant, transplant, manure. We read catalogues of roses till we are
bewildered with their lustrous glories. We set out plum, pear, and
peach, we luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest grapes, and our
theoretic garden is Paradise Regained. But in the actual garden there
are cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for all the melons, slugs
and rose-bugs for the roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for
pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, and late a