f my crutches, and while I
looked and talked, holding my body motionless, I was planting my
crutches and throwing my weight on my well foot. I heard the girl coming
out of the house and knew the time had come. With all my strength I
swung myself backward as he made the leap. His hot breath rushed into my
face, his fiery eyes glared close to mine, but his chain was too short.
Then I knew I had no mission for taming panthers. From the first I had
feared that he would kill some child, and it was impossible to prevent
them trooping to see him. After my own narrow escape I protested so
strongly against keeping him, that my husband consented to sell him to a
menagerie; but those which came were supplied with panthers, and,
although he was a splendid specimen, full nine feet long, no sale was
found for him.

That adventure supplied memory with a picture, which for long years
breathed and never was absent. If it was not before me it was in some
corner, and I knew Tom was crouched to spring on me; his fiery eyes
glared, the tip of his tail wagged, and he was waiting, only waiting for
me to move. Often when I woke at night, he was on my bed or in a corner
of the room. He was hidden in fence corners and behind bushes on the
roadside, and Mary's little lamb was never half so faithful as my
phantom panther.

My husband could not understand the fear I felt, nor realize the danger
of keeping him. He enjoyed his own mastery over him, and with a box on
the side of the head he made Tom whine and crouch like a spaniel. I have
often wondered that in all the accounts I have ever read of lights with
wild animals, no one ever planted a good fist-blow under the ear of his
four-legged antagonist, and so stretch it out stiff to await his
leisure in disposing of it.

CHAPTER XV.

WILLOWS BY THE WATER-COURSES.--AGE, 27.

Pennsylvania customs made it unmanly for a man or boy to aid any woman,
even mother or wife, in any hard work with which farms abounded at that
time. Dairy work, candle and sausage making were done by women, and any
innovation was met with sneers. I stubbornly refused to yield altogether
to a time-honored code, which required women to perform outdoor
drudgery, often while men sat in the house, and soon had the sympathy of
our own boys; for it was often impossible to obtain any domestic help,
though Pittsburg "charitable" people supported hundreds of women in
idleness who might have had homes and wages in farmhouses.