e save for her if she would. When I suggest this to her she laughs
and says, "Wait till we need to save as badly as that, mother," which
doesn't seem to me good reasoning at all. "Waste not, want not," say
I, and when it comes to throwing out perfectly good glass jars, as the
girls would do if I didn't see to it they saved them, why, I put my foot
down. If Ada doesn't want them herself to put things up in, why, some
poor woman will. I don't believe in throwing things away that may come
in handy sometime. When I kept house nobody ever went lacking strings or
a box of whatever size, to send things away in, or paper in which to
do it up, and I can remember in mother's day there was never a time she
hadn't pieces put by for a handsome quilt. Machinery has put a stop to
many of our old occupations, and the result is a generation of nervous
women who haven't a single thing in life to occupy themselves with but
their own feelings, while girls like Peggy, who are active and useful,
have nothing to do but to go to school and keep on going to school. If
one wanted to dig into the remote cause of things, one might find the
root of our present trouble in these changed conditions, for Cyrus's
sister, Elizabeth, is one of these unoccupied women. Formerly in a
family like ours there would have been so much to do that, whether she
liked it or not, and whether she had married or not, Elizabeth would
have had to be a useful woman--and now the less said the better.

It is hard, I say, to see the causes for unhappiness set in action and
yet do nothing, or, if one speaks, to speak to deaf ears. Oh, it is very
hard to do this, and this has been the portion of older women always.
Our children sometimes won't even let us dry their tears for them, but
cry by themselves, as I know Ada has been doing lately--though in the
end she came to me, or rather I went to her, for, after all, I am living
in the same world with the rest of them. I have not passed over to the
other side yet, and while I stay I am not going to be treated as if I
were a disembodied spirit. I have eyes of my own, and ears too, and I
can see as well as the next man when things go wrong.

I have always known that no good would come of sending Peggy to a
coeducational college. I urged Ada to set her foot down, for Ada didn't
wish to send Peggy there, naturally enough, but she wouldn't.

"Well," said I, "I'M not afraid to speak my mind to your husband." Now
I very seldom open my mo