Intertwined with home remedies, recipes, menus, advice columns, and budgets are Fran’s clips and comments about faith and how to live a faithful life.
“A Child’s Grace” with musical score: “For all we eat and all we wear, For daily food and nightly care, We thank thee Heavenly Father.”
“His Ten Commandments To Make A Home Happy” from the Reverend Clinton C. Cox, a “social-minded pastor of the Drexel Park Presbyterian Church” in Chicago during the 1920s:
1) God First
2) Join a church and worship regularly
3) Have blessings at meals and family worship
4) Be loyal to your family always
5) Don’t air family differences to neighbors; tell God. He understands.
6) Educate yourself for your job. Be the best father or mother possible.
7) Let your family know you love them.
8) Don’t be afraid to sacrifice. There is joy in so doing.
9) Talk over all business together; understand one another.
10) Be ready to forgive and always close the day friends.
St. Francis of Assisi
Handwritten copy: Prayer by St. Francis Assisi:
“Lord, make me an instrument of thy Peace,//Where there is hatred, let me sow love;//Where there is doubt, faith;//Where there is despair, hope;//Where there is despair, hope;//Where there is darkness, light;//And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that//I do not so much seek to be consoled as to console,//to be understood as to understand,//to be loved as to love,//for it is in giving that we receive,//it is in pardoning that we pardon,//and it is in dying that we are born to everlasting life.
Hand written: Where does the soul go? I believe that after death man’s soul goes immediately to God who created it.
Scripture -14-15-16-17 chapters of St. John
15th chapter of 1st Corinthians
Handwritten: The spiritual body is Personality. You of you. That makes you different & sets you apart. Beyond the grave we shall know and be known.
Handwritten: “The test of my life and my work is not, “What do others think?” but “Do I know I have done my best?” You need no greater commendation for your service than the testimony of a clear conscience. If you can look up to God and say without reservation or evasion “I have done my best,” then no matter what may be said of you, your life will be a success.
Handwritten: “In God I live and move and have my being, therefore I shall not fear. I am surrounded by the peace of God. – Frances Davis Plaisted
“Dr. Kingsolver Stresses Value of Bible Reading”: Speaks at Trinity Church, Copley Square (Boston) on 400th anniversary of the English Printed Bible:
“…Again today the very same questions that you will find handled with finality of insight in the Sermon on the Mount, are the questions which we are aware we face.
“Such questions as the stability of marriage and the home, and whether there is justification for divorce; the old question of retaliation between nations, and the search for a way of peaceable solution to enmities that arise between nations; the pressing problem of making a living and man’s immemorial question as to whether loyalty to God should deny him the right to take advantage of worldly opportunities.”
“Pittsburgh Man Preaches on Power of Faith”: Reverend High-Moor: We need “intelligent faith”; not a faith “only realized through manifesto.” It is “personal faith” which enables us to stand ridicule”; help us “live that we may be like [God]”; help others “in the face of disillusion.”
Emily Post reads to her sons around 1898
Emily Post offers “A Christmas Prayer,” which is actually St. Francis of Assisi’s, although she does not attribute it to him. One of Fran’s favorites: Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.//Where there is hatred, let me sow love,…
Handwritten/copied in ink: Mountains and Molehills:
“Why Beholdest Thou the mole?” read Matt 7:1-8:
Most of us are good at it. Some minor mishap at breakfast, or on the way to work, and the whole day is spoiled. We allow everything to irritate us. And it is not nerves – it is lack of Christian self-control, of dependence on Christ.
But suppose we try to make mountains of molehills. We can make much of some service rendered, the kindly ministries we take for granted. The service may be trivial – a molehill. But let us make mountains of our mercies.
Give us, O Holy father, the discerning eye that can detect only the good & appraise the worthwhile For Jesus’ sake, Amen.
Inserts: Church Service Programs with colorized portraits of Christ from:
Lewiston Baptist Church, Maine, Palm Sunday, March 21st, 1937 (son Bob is at Bates)
Calendar for Week of Jan. 30, 1949 (presumably First Baptist Church, Sanford Maine, Pew 14)
What Grammy Knew 