he walks around an' tells how he killed the bear, an'
that's the sort of man who's always to be heard sayin' woman is a
inferior animal that ought to be kep' on a chain as he thinks fit.
You'll never hear the kind of man like Bray (who is a man an' keeps
his wife like a princess) sayin' that sort of thing--it's only the old
Hollises and such. I'll tell you what old Hollis is. He got out of
work here a few years back, w'en things was terrible dull, an' so his
wife had to keep him, and with a child for every year they had been
married. She rared chickens an' plucked 'em and sold 'em around the
town, an' went without necessaries w'en she was nursin' to keep him in
tobacco. That's the kind of man _he_ is, if you want to know. Of
course, bein' a animal twice her superior, he had to go about suckin'
a pipe, and of course he couldn't deny hisself anythink. What do you
think of that?"

"That its pathos lies in its commonness."

"I reckon you didn't hear of him goin' out an' pluckin' the fowls then
an' sayin', 'Wife, a woman's place w'en she has a young family is in
the house.' No fear! She worked at this poultry business, an' it was
surprisin' how she got on--worked it up to a big poultry farm, till he
took a hand in doin' a little of the work an' takin' _all_ the credit.
Now they live by it altogether; an' he was interviewed by the papers a
little while ago, and it was blew about the reward of enterprise,--how
he had started from nothink, an' it never said a word how she started
an' rared his babies an' done it all, an' does most now, while he
walks about to illustrate what a superior bein' he is. That's the way
with all the poultry industry. Women was the pioneers in it, an' now
it's worked up to be payin', men has took it over and think they have
done a stroke. Not so far back a man would consider hisself disgraced
that knew one kind of fowls from another,--he would be thought a old
molly-coddle. The women tried to keep a few hens an' the men always
tried to kill them, an' said they'd ruin the place, an' at the same
time they hunt them was always cryin' out an' gruntin' that there
wasn't enough eggs to eat, an' why didn't the hens lay the same as
they used w'en they was boys. They expected the women to rare them on
nothink, or at odd moments, the same way as they expect them to do
everythink else. Now, even the swells is gone hen mad, an' the papers
are full of poultry bein' a great industry, but it was women started
it."