THE PARSON’S WIFE
LIFE OF UNENDING DEMANDS. A glimpse of what is demanded of a parson’s wife is given by Mr Hartzell Spence in a biography of his father (an American Methodist minister) entitled “One Foot in Heaven. Mr Spence writes: Mother worked in the parish and taught a Sunday School class. She led the'devotions before the missionary societies. She played hostess to the Ladies’ Aid, the Sew and So Club, and the Committee for the Alleviation of the Plight of the Poor. Feminine complaints too delicate for the pastor’s ear came to her, and she bolstered the sisters in all their hours of trial. She sat by sickbeds, comforted widows, consoled jilted and betrayed maidens, heard an unending stream of petty personal complaints. She was a psychiatrist before the days of psychiatry. And from her pitiful share of Father's meagre earnings she contributed to every charity, organised and unorganised, worthy . and unworthy. All this she bore with the benignity of a Raphael Madonna. How 'she did it is a mystery that no one but another minister’s wife can ever understand.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1941, Page 7
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181THE PARSON’S WIFE Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1941, Page 7
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