was an old maid. In my day, child, you could
tell an old maid the minute you set eyes on her. But nowadays the old
maids and the married women looks about alike, and one's jest as happy
and good lookin' and busy and well contented as the other, and folks
seem to think jest as much of the old maids as they do of the married
women. I said somethin' o' this sort to Henrietta, and she laughed
and says, 'Yes, grandma; the old maids nowadays have their hands so
full lookin' after the rights o' the married women and the little
children that they don't have time to grow old or worry about not
bein' married, and of course,' says she, 'we can't help lovin' 'em and
lookin' up to 'em when they're so good and so useful.'

"But, as I was sayin', this Miss Laura told how her club had worked
for ten years to git married women their rights, so's a married woman
could own her own property and manage it to suit herself and have the
spendin' of her own wages while she lived and make a will when she
come to die. And that made me think o' Sally Ann's experience and pore
'Lizabeth. And Miss Laura says, 'But there's one right still that a
married woman hasn't got, and that is the right to her own children.'
And she told how the law give the father a right to take a child away
from its mother and carry it off whenever he pleased, and bring it up
as he pleased and app'int its guardians. And she told how many times
they'd been to the legislature to git the law changed, and said they'd
have to keep on goin' till they got this right for mothers, jest like
they'd got property rights for wives. And I thought of Uncle Billy's
grandmother, and says I to myself: 'Don't you reckon a legislature's
jest as terrifyin' to a woman as wildcats and Indians? Ain't these
women got jest as much courage as their grandmothers?'

"One lady got up and told what they was doin to keep the fine trees
from bein' all cut down, jest like Uncle Billy said, and that reminded
me of Abram. A tree was like a brother to Abram. He was always
plantin' trees, but I never knew him to cut one down unless it was
dyin' or dead. You see that big sugar-maple out yonder by the fence,
child? Well, right beside it there used to be a big silver poplar.
There ain't a prettier tree in the world than the silver poplar. It's
pretty in the sunshine and it's still prettier by night, if the moon's
shinin'; and when the wind's blowin', why, I can sit and look at that
tree by the hour. But it's got a