Explore "A New Year's Reminder" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Better have a tender conscience for the record of your house, / And your own share in the work which they have done, / Though your private conscience aches / With your personal mistakes, / And you don't amount to very much alone,
Than to be yourself as spotless as a baby one year old, / Your domestic habits wholly free from blame, / While the company you stand with / Is a thing to curse a land with, / And your public life is undiluted shame.
For the deeds men do together are what saves the world to-day- / By our common public work we stand or fall- / And your fraction of the sin / Of the office you are in / Is the sin that's going to damn you, after all!