The Emilie Loring Collection

It was bound to happen. Just this week, the digitized newspapers of our small Wisconsin town were put online for the first time. I searched for my family’s surnames and struck gold immediately. So many human interest stories would have eluded me if not for the aid of digitizing and full-text search!

Encouraged by my success, this morning I searched several databases in case something “new” from Emilie Loring might have been newly digitized.

And something had–several somethings, in fact.

Emilie said that she had a “horror” of sermonizing in her books. She hoped they conveyed her values, but her first purpose was to entertain, not to instruct. Before her novel-writing days, though, she wrote a series of articles whose principal purpose was to instruct.

I don’t know the full history of Emilie’s involvement, but in 1910, the pediatrician husband of Emilie’s good friend Beth Kerley wrote a book called “On the Conservation of Children.” Several years later, the Child Conservation League of America was organized in Chicago to be “an educational and benevolent society” to assist parents and teachers with the upbringing of children and youth.

The foundation of success in any worthy undertaking and the primary requisite of all good citizenship is good moral character… Only those who are great in soul can produce greatness.

The Child Conservation League of America: Its Plan and Purpose, 1914

Emilie resonated with the idea that everyone in a family–mother, father, children, grandparents–could thrive, not just survive, and she had definite thoughts about how that might come about. Today, we would talk about respect, observing boundaries, and a balance of personal and community responsibility. The early 1900s language was moral training, character, self-responsibility, and social ethics.

Under her pseudonym, Josephine Story, Emilie Loring published multiple articles in the organization’s official magazine, Social Progress, now in the public domain and provided by HathiTrust. If you check your copy of Happy Landings: Emilie Loring’s Life, Writing, and Wisdom, you’ll find only one of these articles listed in the bibliography: “My First Real Vacation” (1921). I had manuscripts but not publication information for portions of others, but this morning was my first time reading “If You Want It, It’s Yours.” We’re on this journey together!

Consistently for Emilie, she focused on a mother’s perspective. I picture the many older women of her novels, experienced women giving advice to a young mother to make time for what matters most.

Enjoy.

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If You Want It, It’s Yours

by Josephine Story

October 1920

“There is Janice Otis, Peggy.”

Margaret Carrington looked curiously at the vivid, beautiful woman who was the center of an admiring group. “She makes me feel old and colorless, Jane.”

“Does she? She has refused to let life gobble her, that’s the answer. She’s a wonder. She’s everything a woman ought to be.”

“How does she manage to look like that?” exclaimed Margaret with a stifled sigh. “I’m worn to a frazzle with community work, taking care of the children, and trying to make both ends meet.”

“You take life too hard, Peg. She has done every bit as much as you have to help in these last tragic years. Her two sons went into the service, her husband’s business was flattened out with steamroller effectiveness, but Janice refused to knuckle. Through it all she burned the midnight oil to read and keep herself well groomed and gowned, for never was there more need of sweet, attractive-looking women than in recent war-times. Here she comes! Janice, have you time to take tea with Margaret Carrington and me?”

The newcomer seated herself at the table. She was serene, unhurried. Margaret Carrington felt as though the oil of restfulness had been poured upon an unquiet sea.

“Time? I always have time to do what I want, and just now I want to hear about Mrs. Carrington’s big boys and that lovely daughter.”

“First, Mrs. Otis, tell me how with your multifarious interests you always have time,” Margaret asked eagerly.

“That’s easy. You see, I believe that a person can have anything she wants if she wants it hard enough, especially when she has reached the golden age of maturity. We all have heaps of ideas, world-shaking ones, no doubt, but it’s action that gets them across. We all have ambitions; but while one is considering in a sort of denatured way what she would like to do, another is doing.

Don’t take life too soberly, Mrs. Carrington. I received my lesson there from an English clergyman. I had been deploring certain conditions, with my mouth drooping like a weeping-willow and my forehead trenched with wrinkles. He looked at me earnestly for a moment before he counseled with a smile: ‘Drop the problems of the universe for a while, my dear. Let God take care of His world. Your mind is wound up in a hard ball of seriousness; ravel it into unseriousness. Life was intended to mean love and laughter quite as much as tragedy and care. Take time to enjoy your five senses. Turn the children out to grass for a while and be young again with your husband.

“So now when I feel life rushing me, I set my feet mulishly and refuse to be hustled. That is my secret of having time–that, and my firm and tested belief that if one really wants to do a thing one can accomplish it. It’s a simple prescription for happiness and success; just try it,” she laughed.

Stimulated and inspired, Margaret Carrington drove home beside her husband in the open car. Lights blazed in shop windows, horns sounded mellow warnings. She moved closer to him and he smiled down upon her tenderly. What fine eyes Mark had, she thought, but how seldom she gave them the opportunity of smiling at her! Was it possible that by planning and determination they could have time together again? Could she learn to adjust things in their right proportions, to see the big things big and the small things small? She waited until they reached a quiet road before she demanded with theatrical seriousness:

“Mark, guess what I have done!”

“Bought Elaine the silk sweater she’s been teasing for, with the money I gave you for your birthday,” promptly.

Margaret winced. Had she been so inconsiderate of his thoughtfulness in the past?

“Of course, I didn’t, honey–and–and don’t turn the car over,” she remonstrated. In his surprise at her tone he had given the wheel a twist. Her conscience stung. Had she starved him while gorging the children with affection? “Well, then, I’ve joined the Order of If You Want It–It’s Yours. It’s going to do wonders for me. Ever heard of it?” with a ripple of laughter.

“Never, but if it can make you laugh like that I’m for it now and forever.”

Sitting close in the cool, crisp dusk, she told him of the afternoon’s experience. “And Mark,” she concluded, “when Mrs. Otis declared that one could achieve anything one was determined to do, that she had tested out the system and found it surefire, I felt like Paul on his way to Damascus, ‘Suddenly there shone a great light round about me.’ I decided that I would get more out of life with you, that I would make time for love and laughter, and encourage the children to share my responsibilties and duties. Will you help me out when you see me wobbling?”

“Will I? Just watch me! We’ve all of us grown to be like sponges, we absorb everything you do for us and return mighty little unless we’re squeezed. That’s the usual munificent reward of self-effacing mothers.”

Margaret sighed. “It isn’t going to be easy for me. The habits of a lifetime are hard to break. I am so accustomed to thinking that no one can do anything but myself. I forget that you have rights as a husband and father, and that the children are no longer babies.”

“Well, you can count on me. The next time I see you preparing to submerge your personality, preparing to admit, ‘I can’t!’ I’ll fix you with my Gorgon eye and remind you sternly: If you really want it–it’s yours!”

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It’s cold and rainy at the lake today. As I sort sixty-five years of accumulation in the cottage basement, I’ll contemplate how to add these newly-found articles to my copy of Happy Landings. It’s a good problem to have.

Happy Landings!