"Only," said mother, in her sweetest, most heartfelt way, "by
learning how true it is that one must be chief to really serve; that
it takes the highest to do perfect ministering; that the brightest
grace and the most beautiful culture must come to bear upon this
little, every-day living, which is all that the world works for after
all. The whole heaven is made that just the daily bread for human
souls may come down out of it. Only the Lord God can pour this room
full of little waves of sunshine, and make a still, sweet morning in
the earth."

Mother and Madam Pennington looked at each other with soulful eyes.

"'We girls,'" began mother again, smiling,--"for that is the way the
children count me in,--said to each other, when we first tried this
new plan, that we would make an art-kitchen. We meant we would have
things nice and pretty for our common work; but there is something
behind that,--the something that 'makes the meanest task divine,'--the
spiritual correspondence of it. When we are educated up to that I
think life and society will be somewhat different. I think we shall
not always stop short at the drawing-room, and pretend at each other
on the surface of things. I think the time may come when young girls
and single women will be as willing, and think it as honorable, to go
into homes which they need, and which need them, and give the best
that they have grown to into the commonwealth of them, as they are
willing now to educate and try for public places. And it will seem to
them as great and beautiful a thing to do. They won't be buried,
either. When they take the work up, and glorify it, it will glorify
them. We don't know yet what households might be, if now we have got
the wheels so perfected, we would put the living spirit into the
wheels. They are the motive power; homes are the primary meetings.