bad way o' sproutin' from the root,
and the young trees come up everywhere and crowd out everything else,
jest like people that ain't content with their own land and always
covetin' other folks' farms. Well, I got so tired o' choppin' down the
young sprouts every spring and summer that I told Abram that tree had
to go, and, besides, it was sp'ilin' the shape o' the young
sugar-maple right by it. I reckon Abram had got tired, too, hearin'
me quarrel about the sprouts comin' up in my flower-beds, so he went
out to the wood-shed and got his ax. He stopped a minute on the front
porch and looked up at the tree, and jest then a little breeze sprung
up and every leaf blew wrong side out. And Abram laid down his ax and
says he: 'Jane, I can't do it. I'll cut the sprouts down, but don't
ask me to cut down a tree that looks that way when the wind blows.'
And the old poplar stood, honey, till it was struck by lightnin' one
summer, and died at the top. Then Abram was willin' to have it cut
down.

"What was I talkin' about, honey? Oh, yes; them women's clubs. Well, I
set there listenin' to 'em tellin' how their clubs had worked for this
thing and that, and how hard it was to git men to see things the way
they saw 'em, and it come over me all at once that they was contendin'
with the same sort o' troubles us women down in Goshen had when we got
our organ and our cyarpet for the church. I ricollect when we was
talkin' about the cyarpet Silas Petty says: 'What's the use o' havin'
that cyarpet? Hasn't this church got along fifteen years with jest
these good pine boards underfoot?' And Sally Ann says: 'Yes; you men
folks think that because things has always been thus and so, they've
always got to be. But,' says she, 'I've noticed that when a thing
always has been, most likely it's a thing that ought never to 'a'
been.' And from what I could gether, listenin' to the ladies read
their papers, there was the same old trouble betwixt the clubs and the
legislatures that there used to be down in Goshen church, the women
wantin' to go on, and the men pullin' back and standin' still.

"And one lady told about Emperor William over yonder in Germany
sayin' that women oughtn't to do anything but cook and go to church
and nurse the children, and says I, 'That's Silas Petty over again.'
And then she went on to tell how some o' the men was findin' fault
with women because families wasn't as large as they was in their
great-grandmothers' day. And thi