Make Every Minute Count

"My beloved speaks and says to me,

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away

For, behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of Spring has come,

and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land."

Song of Solomon 2:2

Spring Serenade

Paulie Rollins

On this first official day of Spring 2019

some timeless words of wisdom and advice from

 one of America's most prolific and beloved authors...

Spring has come! The wild birds have been singing the glad tidings

for several days, but they are such optimistic little souls that I always

take their songs of spring with a grain of pessimism. The squirrels

and chipmunks have been chattering to me, telling the same news,

but they are such cheerful busybodies that I never believe quite all they say.

But now I know that spring is here, for as I passed the little creek on my

way to the mailbox this morning, I saw scattered papers caught on the bushes,

empty cracker and sandwich cartons strewn around on the green grass, and

discolored pasteboard boxes soaking in the clear water of the spring.

I knew then that spring was here, for the sign of the picnickers is more sure

than that of singing birds and tender green grass, and there is nothing more

unlovely than one of nature's beauty spots defiled in this way.

It is such an unprovoked offense to nature, something like

insulting one's host after enjoying his hospitality.

It takes just a moment to put back into the basket the empty boxes

and paper, and one can depart gracefully leaving the place all clean

and beautiful for the next time or the next party.

Did you ever arrive all clean and fresh, on a beautiful summer morning,

at a pretty picnic place and find that someone had been there before you,

and that the place was all littered with dirty papers and buzzing flies?

If you have ever left a place in the same condition, it served you right.

Let's keep the open spaces clean, not fill them up with rubbish!

Picnic litter left behind in a public park.

It is so easy to get things cluttered-one's days, for instance, as well as

picnic places-to fill them with empty, useless things and so make them

unlovely and tiresome. Even though the things with which we fill

our days were once important, if they are serving no good purpose

now, they have become trash like the empty boxes and papers

of the picnickers. It will pay to clean this trash away and 

keep our days as uncluttered as possible.

There are just as now so many things that must be done that we are

tempted to spend ourselves recklessly, especially as it is rather

difficult to decide what to eliminate; and we cannot possibly

accomplish everything.

We must continually be weighing and judging and discarding

things that are presented to us if we would save ourselves and

spend our time and strength only on those things that are important.

We may be called upon to spend our health and strength to the

last bit, but we should see to it that we do not waste them.*

"Oh, I am so tired that I just want to sit down and cry," a friend

confided to me, "and here is the club meeting on hand and the lodge

practice and the Red Cross workday and the aid society meeting

and the church bazaar to get ready for, to say nothing of the pie

supper at the schoolhouse and the spring sewing and garden,

and-Oh! I don't see how I'm ever going to get through it all!"

Of course, she was a little hysterical.  It didn't all have to be done

at once, but it showed how over-tired she was, and it was plain that

something must give way-if nothing else, herself.

My friend needed a little open space in her life.

We must none of us shirk our responsibilities.  We must do our part

in every way, but let's be sure we clear away the rubbish, that we do

nothing for empty form's sake nor because someone else does,

unless it is the thing that should be done.

Laura Ingalls Wilder at age 30

in the ravine on Rocky Ridge Farm

Mansfield, Missouri

(1900)

"Make Every Minute Count"

(March 1918)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

From the book,

"Little House In The Ozarks

A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler

The Re-Discovered Writings"

Edited by Stephen W. Hines

Guideposts Edition

(1991)

*World War I priorities were making themselves felt in the Ozarks.