eight years old it was plain enough to me that there were other
kinds of slavery quite as bad, and that my own mother wore as heavy
bonds as any of them. She was a farmer's wife, and from year's end to
year's end she toiled and worked. She never had a cent of her own, for
the butter money was consecrated to the cause, and she gave it gladly.
My father had no particular intention to be unkind. He was simply like a
good two-thirds of the farmers I have known,--much more careful of his
animals than of his wife. A woman was so much cooking and cleaning and
butter-making force, and child-bearing an incident demanding as little
notice as possible. It is because of that theory that I am five inches
shorter than any of our tribe. My mother was a tall, slender woman, with
a springy step and eyes as clear as a brook. I see them sometimes as I
lie here at night.

"I said to myself when I was ten that I'd have things easier for her
before she died. I said it straight ahead while I was working my way up
in the village store, for I would not farm, and when she died I said it
to her in the last hour I ever heard her voice: 'What I couldn't do for
you, mother, I'll do for all women as long as I am on the earth.'

"I was eighteen then, and whichever way I turned some woman was having a
hard time, and some brute was making it for her. I knew it was partly
their own fault for not teaching their boys how to be unselfish and
decent, but custom and tradition, the law and the prophets, were all
against them. I watched it all I could, but I was deep in trying to get
ahead and I did. Somehow, in spite of my dreams and my fancies, there
was a money-making streak in me. It's a lost vein. You may search as you
will and find no trace, but it was there once and gave good returns. I
left the village at twenty-one and went to Philadelphia, and the small
savings I took with me from my clerking soon began to roll up. I had the
chance to go into a soap-factory; a queer change, but the old Quaker who
owned it knew my father and wanted to do me a good turn, and by the time
I had got the hang of it all I was junior partner and settled for life
if I liked.

"Well, here it was again. This man was honest and clean. He meant to do
fairly by all mankind, and he tried to. He had some secrets in his
methods that made his soap the best in the market. The chief secret was
honest ingredients, but it was famous. If you've ever been in a
soap-factory you know what it