Show KA KATHLEEN NORRIS Lets Let's Recall Time Old-Time Virtues TF IF YOU WERE a little girl at atthe atthe the Easter time of of say a hundred hundred hun hun- dred years ago you would probably probably probably ably find yourself In a family that used several terms that a are e only vaguely familiar to you and of which your children dont don't know the sound The family was probably God fearing That's one of the words You would have often otten heard of your duty That's another Then there was modesty which has gone out as a word and ps as s a fact Other words stood for obedience respect for elders purity of speech avoidance of everything coarse or degraded Easter was a time of prayer Some of it was automatic some of it was a mere social gesture Some of If It struck the younger generation generation genera genera- tion as boring and sometimes Sunday Sunday Sun Sun- day was a day to dread But nevertheless there was pray pray- er Family groups strolled to church churchIn In the spring sunshine God was thanked for domestic blessings blessings' Gods God's help was sought In insufferable insufferable insufferable able Lent meant certain in restrictions re reo re- re theatres and candy were foregone for 40 days and Lenten marriages took upon them a sober character Our Father So that Easter when the physical world burst Into bloom and door dooryards dooryards dooryards yards were crowded with daffodils and lilacs and light lingered on after suppertime up and down under under un un- der the elms and oaks of Main language matched the niceness of their speech their books their con con- duct And years ago they didn't have to be taken from comfortable homes either from the guardianship guardianship guardian guardian- I ship of parents or the love of husband husband hus hus- band and children to be put Into i psychopathic wards weeping that i they dont don't like what they ought to tot toi I Ido do and consequently dont don't have anything anything any any- I thing to do except occupational therapy behind bars A sense of duty with all that it Iti Implies to parents to husband and home and children to reading and speech and to the smallest action is a great tonic It makes life worth worthwhile worthwhile worthwhile while to be always holding oneself up to higher levels of service and of perfection For the real seat of duty Is Is of course the human soul We cant can't go back a hundred years to parents who were too preachy to church services and Sunday laws that made the seventh seventh sev sev- day a time to dread to geering geer- geer ing at old maids and paying a working hard-working servant 10 dollars a a month to whalebone and crinolines crino- crino lines to seven-course seven meals that kept dear Papa in a constant state of dyspepsia and corsets that squeezed the last breath of comfort comfort com com- fort out of dear Mamma To coal stoves and kerosene lamps whipping whipping whip whip- ping schoolmasters and cruel step step- mothers But nut perhaps we could infuse faint modernized strains of these these old virtues into today's roar and rush Easter makes one think of it A time for housecleaning and stock stock- taking Prayer Duty Modesty |