wisdom from Lucretia Garfield

I borrowed a cookbook from the library, favorite recipes of all the First Ladies up to Lyndon Johnson's time in office. It's rather disappointing - they ate lots of white sauces and thick sorts of foods which are so different from our modern tastes. But this caught my eye about President Garfield's wife, Lucretia:

"Mrs. Garfield had been compelled in the early years to take on many domestic chores for her family which were not always as appealing to her as literary and cultural affairs. Long years before she became the First Lady, while she was deep in the mundane task of kneading bread for her household, she had developed a philosophy of life, which became an integral part of her. ..Making great batches of bread appeared to be an inescapable duty, so she determined that she would overcome her dislike for this chore by taking a very special interest in it. .. she wrote:

The whole of life became brighter. The very sunshine seemed to be flowing down through my spirit into the white loaves, and now I believe my table is furnished with better bread than ever before; and this truth, as old as creation, seems just now to have become fully mine - that I need not be the shrinking slave of toil, but its regal master."

-  from The First Ladies Cook Book