s
if parson was preachin' to us on 'lection and predestination. But
whenever I think about it now, I laugh fit to kill. And I've thought
many a time that Sally Ann's plain talk to them men done more good
than all the sermons us women had had preached to us about bein'
'shame-faced' and 'submittin'' ourselves to our husbands, for every
one o' them women come out in new clothes that spring, and such a
change as it made in some of 'em! I wouldn't be surprised if she did
have a message to deliver, jest as she said. The Bible says an ass
spoke up once and reproved a man, and I reckon if an ass can reprove a
man, so can a woman. And it looks to me like men stand in need of
reprovin' now as much as they did in Balaam's days.

"Jacob died the follerin' fall, and 'Lizabeth got shed of her
troubles. The triflin' scamp never married her for anything but her
money.

"Things is different from what they used to be," she went on, as she
folded her pieces into a compact bundle and tied it with a piece of
gray yarn. "My son-in-law was tellin' me last summer how a passel o'
women kept goin' up to Frankfort and so pesterin' the Legislatur',
that they had to change the laws to git rid of 'em. So married women
now has all the property rights they want, and more'n some of 'em has
sense to use, I reckon."

"How about you and Uncle Abram?" I suggested. "Didn't Sally Ann say
anything about you in her experience?"

Aunt Jane's black eyes snapped with some of the fire of her long-past
youth. "La! no, child," she said. "Abram never was that kind of a man,
and I never was that kind of a woman. I ricollect as we was walkin'
home that night Abram says, sort o' humble-like: 'Jane, hadn't you
better git that brown merino you was lookin' at last County Court
day?'

"And I says, 'Don't you worry about that brown merino, Abram. It's
a-lyin' in my bottom drawer right now. I told the storekeeper to cut
it off jest as soon as your back was turned, and Mis' Simpson is goin'
to make it next week.' And Abram he jest laughed, and says, 'Well,
Jane, I never saw your beat.' You see, I never was any hand at
'submittin'' myself to my husband, like some women. I've often
wondered if Abram wouldn't 'a' been jest like Silas Petty if I'd been
like Maria. I've noticed that whenever a woman's willin' to be imposed
upon, there's always a man standin' 'round ready to do the imposin'. I
never went to a law-book to find out what my rights was. I did my duty
faithful t