they do not know what to
begin first. Having chosen the most important task, attack that, and
when you have once laid hold of the plough, drive straight ahead, not
allowing the sight of another furrow, which is not just straight, to
induce you to stop midway to straighten it before you have finished
the one upon which your energies should now be bent. Too many women
are mere potterers, not earnest laborers. They begin to make a bed,
and stop to brush up some dust that has collected under the bureau.
Before the dust-pan is emptied, the thought occurs of a tear in one of
the children's aprons, and by the time that is mended, something else
appears that needs attention, and all day long tasks are half
completed and nothing is entirely finished, until at night the poor
toiler is weary and discouraged, with nothing to show for her pains,
except an anxious face and a semi-straight household.

Woman's work is quite as dignified as man's, and why should it not be
arranged as carefully and systematically? If some thing must be
crowded out, let it be, with forethought and reason, set to one
side,--not shoved or huddled amid mess and confusion.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT GOOD WILL IT DO?

Thus I translate the Latin _cui bono_. In whatever language the query
is put, it is the most valuable balance-wheel ever attached to human
action and speech.

The principle is old. The pithy phrase in the shrewd Roman's mouth was
two-edged, and had a sharp point. The enterprise that led to no good
was not worth beginning.

A friend of mine who has written long, much, and, so far as I can
judge, always profitably, told me that in 1865 she wrought out what
was, to her apprehension, the most powerful book she ever composed,--a
story of the Civil War. She was a Unionist in every thought and
sentiment, and this she proclaimed; she had had unusual opportunities
of seeing behind the scenes of political intrigue, and she had
improved them. When the last chapter was written she carried the MS.
into her husband's study at dusk one evening, and began to read it
aloud to him. She finished it at two o'clock a.m. Her auditor would
not let her pause until then. Hoarse, but with a heart beating high
with excitement, she waited for the verdict. The husband walked up and
down the floor for some minutes, head bent and hands clasped behind
him, deep in thought. Finally he stopped in front of her.

"That is a marvelous book, my dear,--strong, true, dramati