in life is to go through the world
doing the little things left undone by people with Missions. Does it
ever occur to the self-named commonplace woman that her
heaven-appointed task is as high a "mission" as any that may be taken
up by her more gifted sisters?

It requires vast patience and much love for one's fellow-man to be a
chink-filler. She it is who, as wife, mother, sister, or, perhaps,
maiden-aunt, picks up the hat or gloves Mamie has carelessly left on
the drawing-room table, wipes the tiny finger smears from the
window-panes at which baby stood to wave his hand to papa this
morning, dusts the rungs of the chair neglected by the parlor-maid,
and mends the ripped coat which Johnny forgot to mention until it was
nearly time to start for school. It is she who thinks to pull the
basting-threads out of the newly finished gown, tacks ruching in neck
and sleeves against the time when daughter or sister may want it in a
hurry, remembers to prepare some dainty for that member of the
household who is "not quite up to the mark" in appetite--in fact,
undertakes those tasks, so many of which show for little when done,
but which are painfully conspicuous when neglected. Does she bewail
herself that her sphere is small--limited? Let her pause and consider
how it would affect the family were the hat and gloves to be out of
place, the chair undusted, the blurred window-glass overlooked, the
coat unmended, the bastings allowed to stand in all their hideous
white prominence, the invalid's appetite untempted. Like a good
spirit, our chink-filler glides in and out among the fallen threads in
the tangled web of life, picking up dropped stitches, fastening loose
strands, and weaving the tissue into a harmonious whole, and yet doing
it all so unobtrusively that the great weavers, looking only at the
vast pattern they are forming, are unconscious that, but for the
unselfish thought and deft fingers of the commonplace woman, their
work would be a grand failure. Sometime the children whose
shortcomings she has supplemented and thus saved from harsh reproof,
the servants whose tasks she has made lighter, the husbands and wives,
fathers and mothers, for whom she has made life smoother, and
brighter, will arise and call her blessed. It may not be in this life,
but it will surely come to pass in "the world that sets this right."

"She doth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone or despise;
For naught that sets one heart at ea