How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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“ dreadful looseness ” might be, Elizabeth was unable to say, and yet it remained a veritable bogey. Nor was her worry confined to her family. She had a great fear that she herself would die of cancer, and visited one physician after another, on any pretext, so that she might be examined for the possible beginning of carcinoma. Like many another unhappy woman, Elizabeth G. had not learned to enjoy the company of her fellows, or the art of making life worth while to herself by devotion to some avocation. She had, it is true, more or less grudgingly assumed the responsibilities of motherhood, and had not spared herself any effort to educate and develop her children to the best of her ability. But in the course of time her husband had become increasingly involved in his engineering projects, and was frequently away from home for weeks at a time. Her children had developed a fair measure of independence despite her efforts to make them dependent on her, and were wrell on the way toward adulthood. Even her youngest daughter was more resourceful and more courageous than her mother, and frequently patted her mother on the back, saying, “Oh, don't worry, Mother. It will turn out all right.” While the eldest boy resented his mother’s worry as unfounded, the second son openly ridiculed her fears, and often infuriated her by taking unnecessary physical risks which threw her into a pitiful panic. Of all the family, Elizabeth’s husband was still the most considerate, and on one occasion he left his work, and came a very long journey by aeroplane, in response to a telephone message, to assuage her fears. The second son’s comment was very illuminating : “ Mother almost died, thinking of Dad flying over the mountains, but she risked his neck because she was afraid Mary might get pneumonia from her bad cold, and she was afraid to choose a new doctor. I call it poor sportsmanship ! ” From her early childhood Elizabeth always feared that she would be deserted in an hour of need. The fear dated from her first day at school when she had lost her way,