Mrs. Jones Takes the Rest Cure

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder

The telephone rang sharply in Mrs. Jones's dining room, early one summer morning, and Billy answered it for his mother was busy.

"This is Uncle John," said the voice in the phone. "We are thinking of coming out to your place for a week; it's so awfully hot in town and the children with to play around in the country. Tell your mother."

"Wait a minute," said careful Billy and, hanging the receiver on the hook, he turned to his mother who as clearing the breakfast table and repeated the message.

Mrs. Jones was tired that morning. It was hot in the country, too, especially over the cook stove. And there was so much work ahead that she could not see her way thru it.

She threw up her hands with a gesture of dismay. "Oh! I'm just sick!" she exclaimed.

Billy turned slowly to the telephone, but there was a twinkle in his eye. Tho slow of movement, he was not slow mentally and he was his mother's right-hand man.

"Hullo," he said and then, "I'm afraid it won't do. Mother's ill," and hung up the receiver.

Mrs. Jones gasped, "Oh, Billy," she said, and then she thought: "Well, why not:?" If John and his wife and the two boys came to be fed and waited on she would get none of the week's work done and would be exhausted when the end of the week came. If she were ill (?) the work planned for the week would not be done, either, but at the end of the week she might be rested.

"Well, Billy," she said, "Mother is sick. She is sick to death of this endless work, and if you will clear away the breakfast things, I believe I'll go lie down."

This was the way Mrs. Jones came to take the rest cure for a week, lending the children a helping hand only now and then when they got into serious difficulty and consoling herself for her desertion of them by planning a vacation for them later.

Everyone seems to be so overburdened these days, let's be considerate about our visiting.

I had company myself one day last summer. Mr. and Mrs. P and their three children drove up in their car at just 11 o'clock one morning. I welcomed them as prettily as I knew how, made them comfortable in the living room and said: "If you will please excuse me now, I shall get us all some dinner."

"Oh! We can't stay for dinner," said Mrs. P: "we shall stay only a few minutes." After that I could not leave them to get dinner for The Man of The Place and his hired help, so I sat with them, trying to be entertaining, tho wondering frantically how I could hasten the dinner when I was free to get it.

They stayed on and on. At half past 11, I again urged them to stay and tried to excuse myself from the room. They only refused again, saying they must go. But they didn't. At a quarter to 12 I felt some way that if I should ask them again they would stay to dinner and let me get it, but I had become angry and resolved that if they should stay all day I would not again ask them to eat with us. They left at a few minutes past 12, just as the men appeared in the barn door coming to dinner.

We do enjoy company, all of us, but we are all tired. We have been working unusually hard for two years and have been under a nervous strain besides. We have each adjusted our burden so that we are more or less able to carry it, but a little addition to it makes it, in some cases, unbearable. It was the last feather in the camel's load that broke his back, you know.

Company we must have! Visiting should be more frequent that we may exchange ideas and learn to know and love one another, and there are ways that this may be made easy for us all instead of burdening one another by being inconsiderate.

One of the pleasantest times I remember last summer was a surprise visit from a family of five persons. In the middle of the morning a team drove up and the five were unloaded at my door.

"Daddy was coming on business," cried one of the grown daughters "and we desired to visit with you so we just came along."

"Don't be scared," said the soft-voiced mother. "We took you by surprise so we brought a picnic dinner and we won't let you even build a fire. Just bring out what you have cooked and let's all picnic together."

They proposed eating out under the trees, but we decided it would be pleasanter to spread the dinner on the long table on the screened north porch. How simple and easy, with nobody overworked or tired, and we did have such a good visit.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "Mrs. Jones Takes the Rest Cure." Missouri Ruralist (February 5, 1919): page unknown.

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