aid. 'It will kill Bill, I
fear, but it will pay. You might change your plan a little--Just a
little--an' save poor Bill. Think of eating biscuit an' flapjacks
from the hand of a social leader! Between the millstones of duty
and indigestion he will be sadly ground, but with the axe he may,
if he will, defend his constitution.'

"'Well, what's a constitution between husband and wife?' she asked.
"'Nothin'.' I says. 'Bear in mind I wouldn't discourage you. With
the aid of the axe his ancestors were able to withstand the
assaults of pork an' beans an' pie. If he uses it freely, he is
safe.'

"'You see, I shall have him in a position where he must work or
die,' said Mrs. Bill.

"'He'll die,' said a guest.

"'I call it a worthy enterprise whatever the expense,' I said. 'It
will set a fashion here an' a very good one. In this community
there are so many dear ladies who are prisoners of gravitation.
They rely almost exclusively on hired hands an' feet, an' are
losin' the use o' their own. What confusion will spread among them
when they learn that Mrs. William Henry Warburton, the richest
woman in Fairfield County, and the daughter of a bishop, has been
doin' her own work! What consternation! What dismay! What female
profanity! What a revision of habits an' resolutions! Why,
there's been nothin' like it since the descent of Lizzie.'

"'I think it's terrible,' said a fat lady from Louisville,
distinguished for her appetite, an' often surreptitiously referred
to as 'The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky.' 'The idea of trying to make
it fashionable to endure drudgery! I think we women have all we
can do now.'

"'To be respectable,' said Mrs. Bill; 'but let's try to do
something else.'

"'Why don't you form a Ladies' Protective Union,' Bill suggested,
'an' choose the tiara for a symbol, an' strike for no hours a day
an' all your husbands can earn?'

"'And the employment of skilled idlers only,' Mrs. Bill put in.
'They must all know how to do nothing in the modern way--by
discussing the rights of women and the novel of lust, and the
divorces past and prospective, by playing at bridge and
benevolence. How absurd it all is! I'm not going to be an
overgrown child any longer.'

"I saw that Mrs. Bill was makin' progress, an' with her assistance
I began to hope for better things in that neighborhood.

"You've got to reach the women somehow, you see, before you can
improve the social conditions of a community. I