r, and baked bread, and
sewed carpet rags, and was now bent and broken, and with impaired
sight, he left: "her keep" with one of the boys!

How would you like to be left with "your keep" even with one of your
own children? Keep! It is exactly what the humane master leaves to an
old horse. When the old lady heard the will read which so generously
provided for her "keep," she slipped away without a word. People
thought it was her great grief at losing such a kind husband which made
her pine and droop. But it wasn't. It was the loss of her
independence. Her son and his family thought it strange that "Grandma"
did not care to go to church any more. Of course her son never thought
of giving her collection or money to give to the funds of the church,
and Grandma did not ask. She sat in her corner, and knit stockings for
her son's children; another pitiful little broken bit of human wreckage
cast up by the waves of the world. In two months Grandma had gone to
the house of many mansions, where she was no longer beholden to anyone
for "keep"--for God is more merciful than man!

The man who made his will this way was not a bad man, but he was the
victim of wrong thinking; he did not realize that his wife had any
independence of soul; he thought that all "mother" cared about was a
chance to serve; she had been a quiet, unassertive woman, who worked
along patiently, and made no complaint. What could she need of money?
The "boys" would never see her want.

A man who heard this story said in comment: "Well, I don't see what the
old lady felt so badly about, for what does a woman of sixty-five need
of money anyway?"

He was not a cruel man, either, and so his remark is illuminative, for
it shows a certain attitude of mind, and it shows women where they have
made their mistake. They have been too patient and unassertive--they
have not set a high enough value on themselves, and it is pathetically
true that the world values you at the value you place on yourself. And
so the poor old lady, who worked all her life for her family, looking
for no recompense, nor recognition, was taken at the value she set upon
herself, which was nothing at all.

That does not relieve the state of its responsibility in letting such a
thing happen. It is a hard matter, I know, to protect people from
themselves; and there can be no law made to prevent women from making
slaves of themselves to their husbands and families. That would be
inter